Purgatory by BG Britton - HTML preview

WORK

After my stroke, I registered with the South African Revenue Services (SARS) as a Tax Practitioner (Registration Number F3777CC) in order to make up for the shortfall between my salary and the disability benefit that I was receiving (roughly 35% less).

In addition, I sought to write Business Plans for aspirant entrepreneurs seeking funding. This endeavour proved to be lucrative but not regular. It did however add a considerable amount to my annual earnings.

There was also the odd set of books that I maintained for a monthly fee.

This arrangement continued successfully until October 2013. At that time, I received a visit at home from the auditors of Momentum Life who announced that:

• I would have to repay all monies earned in excess of my disability pension for the preceding nine years. This was because the Disability Pension Rules did not permit extraneous income to be received by beneficiaries of a pension (notwithstanding that such pension was initially 35% lower than my income at the time of the stroke).
• I would henceforward be prohibited from earning any income in excess of my disability benefit.
• It is also worth noting that throughout the currency of the disability pension, annual increases were limited to 5%. Inflation throughout that period probably averaged closer to 10%.

This effectively reduced the amount of savings which I could accumulate to October 2015 when the disability pension terminated.

Fortunately, I could persuade Momentum Life that forcing a disabled pensioner to repay past earnings was inhumane, perverse and worth a story in the national press.

So, life after sixty-five was always going to be a race to the line between my accumulated savings and death.