Hey mcmaster the circus is in town. Just take a look at the article on front page of the silhouette.

here is the link:
http://thesil.ca/blog/news/99-332-interest/
but i'll summarize for you.

For the past 6.5 years the MSU has not paid the PST to the government that they collected from us students from the health plan. instead they kept the money. The grand total that they owe is over $500,000 where $100,000 of which is from the interest the government has charged because they haven't paid. There is a Financial department for christ sakes (who are paid to be there). I mean how do you mess that up and realize you havent paid taxes for the last 6.5 years.

Couple that with the $500,000 deficit the MSU ran last year, primarily because of Quarters, and you have a grand total of one million dollars.

I had no idea that a large portion of the fees i pay each year go to an organization that was such a joke. What is going on over there?

Students want answers! I'm talking about real answers where us students arent the ones who have to bail out the MSU.

I have a three point plan to solve the problem

1. Grab your pitch forks lets hunt the MSU & SRA (I heard the humanities SRA is really mean)
2 ....

...
...

3. Profit!


I wouldn't call the MSU a joke because jokes are funny, not funny, or in poor taste. I would classify the MSU as more of a cancer on the student population.

Union for McMaster students epic fail

Just updating you guys on things I know so far:

1) The money that wasn't paid sat and earned interest, so although the amount owed is around 500,000, the MSU had the money that accumulated, so that's around 400,000 down which belonged to the government anyway. The money also earned interest and so the amount owed will be less than 100,000 (between 50,000 and 75,000 as I've heard, although I'm not exactly sure on this)

2) The SRA was only notified at the last SRA meeting about this, and I know that many SRA members are very, very mad first about this happening and second about knowing about it at such a late time.

More people will prolly be posting, so I'll try to update my post if i was wrong on anything

Originally Posted by aviaf

Just updating you guys on things I know so far:

1) The money that wasn't paid sat and earned interest, so although the amount owed is around 500,000, the MSU had the money that accumulated, so that's around 400,000 down which belonged to the government anyway. The money also earned interest and so the amount owed will be less than 100,000 (between 50,000 and 75,000 as I've heard, although I'm not exactly sure on this)

2) The SRA was only notified at the last SRA meeting about this, and I know that many SRA members are very, very mad first about this happening and second about knowing about it at such a late time.

More people will prolly be posting, so I'll try to update my post if i was wrong on anything

This is probably the first time I've seen someone respond on behalf of the MSU without bullshit, blatant lies, or excuses.

Thank you. We need more people like you in there. As long as people from the MSU tell us what is actually happening with our money, we'll like the student union a tad bit more.

Does anyone know how they just "forgot" to pay taxes?


I dont know, with what I have seen from the MSU so far, part of me thinks the students would be better off without it. I COMPLETELY understand some of the benefits, but besides a few things, it seems like student would be better served by giving that money for equipment and more teaching staff.

You can ask your SRA member to recall a vp finance. In partnership with the full time staff, they are the one who should be on top of this. It's up to you (the msu member) to ask your student government to stand up for your interests (in this case your money).

The least you can ask is for a written warning to the full time staff, after all it is your government and your money.

If you lost 50k or 100k at any job you (as the vp finance or manager) would be fired, I don't see why that is different here.

Originally Posted by Rossclot

Does anyone know how they just "forgot" to pay taxes?


I dont know, with what I have seen from the MSU so far, part of me thinks the students would be better off without it. I COMPLETELY understand some of the benefits, but besides a few things, it seems like student would be better served by giving that money for equipment and more teaching staff.

Check out the DRAFT minutes here from EB 09-21 - where we had a discussion about the PST Audit which as the EB, had only been informed of it a week earlier. Hopefully it will answer a few of the question you have.

What's more troubling is that I saw a document last week; It was a notice dated from November of 2009, stating that the MSU owed the government PST.

I don't agree with how this came about. It's true - we were kept in the dark about it. However, it was NOT discussed in Closed Session (as the Sil reported).

There is another SRA Meeting this Sunday (Feb. 7). If there are any questions you want raised during question period (regarding anything at all), send them along to your SRA members (my email is [email protected] or you can email the caucus leader at [email protected] .ca).

Relavent information:
-McGowan and the business auditor should have caught the mistake.
-MSU has the money to pay for it
-MSU flushed $100,000 of students money down the drain for no reason.
-MSU is trying to appeal it

*sigh* I will post about this issue soon in my upcoming 2010 SRA report. I've typed up a couple of responses on this topic then scrapped them but I don't want to say something officially as an "SRA member" before getting all sides. I'm hearing all sorts of stories behind HOW this big mess happened and HOW and who somehow failed to notice a constant positive profit for the health plan and how PST which is one of the main priorities for even smaller businesses wasn't looked at forensically by the accounting companies(Deloitte) during their annual audit and how people in the MSU Full time staff didn't notice it in their internal review.

I will try and get the VP Finance's side of the story tomorrow and then write up my SRA report. That being said I am extremely unhappy at how and why this issue happened and agree with Mr Jeff Green's sentiments that it is inappropriate to lose $50-100,000 of student money and just sweep it under the rug.

The MSU isn't a joke -- just a broken system that lacks direction. Perhaps this Presidential cycle will provide the students with someone who will take charge and fix whats broken.

Originally Posted by Matt Wright

The MSU isn't a joke -- just a broken system that lacks direction. Perhaps this Presidential cycle will provide the students with someone who will take charge and fix whats broken.

casey is making sure it stays a joke.

Originally Posted by cocchiarella

Relavent information:
-McGowan and the business auditor should have caught the mistake.
-MSU has the money to pay for it
-MSU flushed $100,000 of students money down the drain for no reason.
-MSU is trying to appeal it

hey, where can I appeal MY taxes??? Can I appeal tuition too???

Originally Posted by Matt Wright

The MSU isn't a joke -- just a broken system that lacks direction. Perhaps this Presidential cycle will provide the students with someone who will take charge and fix whats broken.

Have you seen the candidates? They sing Mary Had a Little Lamb, play Miley songs on the guitar, and do all sorts of other ridiculous things to prove that they are the captains of industry who will haul us out of this cycle of apathy and mismanagement.

Fat chance.

Originally Posted by sniderj

Have you seen the candidates? They sing Mary Had a Little Lamb, play Miley songs on the guitar, and do all sorts of other ridiculous things to prove that they are the captains of industry who will haul us out of this cycle of apathy and mismanagement.

Fat chance.

bahah and the two people you just said are Mary Koziol and Casey Park whose campaign is based on the fact that they are SRA members hence they are awesome and know what's going on.....yet they have to use gimmicks like miley cyrus and mary had a little lamb and organizing hippie music festivals in musc without permission.....people like Ash, Kieran and Tauseef don't have to resort to such nonsense even though they are outsiders. Ironic hmmmmm