and Teen to help me, I've gone to A and K to help me.  So, but go ahead. And I just want to say, I did not mention chair at all. I just want to make sure that that's- No, I brought up chair, I brought up chair, I said that. Just to the, I thought that you were insinuating- No, no, no, no, no, no, I just said, I just didn't want, I think it's important for the job description to be able to refer to that there's five commissioners is also a chair role. You know, Karen, for instance, saw some of the chair role when Crystal was promoted up and saw that there are some responsibilities that come with the territory of being chair and thank goodness for Grace. Go ahead, Jordan. Okay, so I can't address it. I think that we're all very familiar with the statute. I go to it also often. I respect the work that you put in and any chair would put in with their additional responsibilities. But I also want to be clear that every commissioner has an equal voice when it comes to policy, when it comes to vote, doesn't matter what the pay scale is. And in so much that the chair's decisions as chair affects the policy and how the policy discussions go, I want to be more active with those positions and not letting anything decision I make be structured by the conversation that comes out of the executive director and the chair's office. And it doesn't matter who the executive director or the chairs. And so... Yeah, because everything that you see in this public forum is transparent. Every vote you take is transparent. Karen Wells, I do not dictate anything with respect to Karen Wells. In fact, the motions come out of legal. Sometimes I haven't even seen those motions. Commissioner Maynard, I just want to be very careful because I don't want to reflect. I don't want to be in any way for our record to ever reflect anything that in any way impinges my integrity. This commission makes its decisions. And you know, Commissioner Maynard, you're very capable of making sure how to vote and you have. So in terms of the structure, in terms of how we operate, this song, I can sleep very carefully, very, very, very well at night. And making sure that everything that comes before you, it's a matter of the five of you and you are able to make your decisions and your plans and your policy. Madam chair, thank you, commissioner Maynard. It was not a personal attack, madam chair. It was not a personal attack. It wasn't personal. That was not a personal attack. But it wasn't personal, but it was an education. But it is structural, madam chair, if I may. It is structural. And this is a time that we're looking at the structure of the commission. I have heard feedback that there are four commissioners, you call them associate commissioners, whatever you want, that need to step up to the plate and be more active. And because of that feedback, I want to integrate this into this process. I have every statutory right to do so. Commissioner Maynard, I would welcome you. And I know that we talked about this, where you've said that you want to be more active. I think that that's your decision. Everyone's way that they operate in this commission is their choice. There's no prescription on how you interpret your role. But it is really important for the executive director to know that there are five full-time commissioners. That means they work full-time for the state. They are full-time commissioners and that they report. They don't report to anyone, but the executive reports up to five and our work is conducted in public. An executive director must be prepared to conduct all their work in public. And in terms of how you want to go forward, commissioners can move. They move as they wish. I don't get involved and I don't think the chair should get involved on crafting motions. I often don't even have them in front of me. So, but another chair might do differently. That is their focus. I think we need to circle back to kind of what we're here for, which is the job description. And I think commissioner Skinner's use of managing, and I don't want to speak for you commissioner Skinner, but it seemed to me more like the colloquial use of that term in terms of how you manage your relationships. Because the reality is this ED is going to be in charge of staff and managing down in that regard, they have to manage up to five of us. And so I totally get the use of the word, commissioner Skinner, because that is, it's managing up and should be blunt. There has to be, and I've said this in Karen's evaluations, there has to be an equitable use of time by the ED. There's a finite amount of time. It is an incredibly demanding job. The just managing down is incredibly challenging. And this ED has the added pressure of dealing with five of us who are ultimately setting policy and making the votes, et cetera. And we all need equal access to the ED. And my point in saying getting that in there was, and I think commissioner Maynard and Skinner have voiced similar issues, which is we want to make sure as we go into this new phase and reorg with the deputy ED, and maybe we're going to be restructuring how staff is coming up to the ED and us, that it is very clear to the candidates coming in, throwing their hat in the ring for this position that that is the expectation of the body of five that will be ultimately voting on who gets the position. Well, Karen, maybe you can give it. I know that some commissioners meet with you once a week. What would you recommend for the IDL arrangement? You do have seen meeting with me. We usually go over, sometimes we have a full hour. We usually go over the meetings and the agenda setting. We go through the agenda setting process with your team that's driven by the team. What would you recommend? Do you think commissioners should have seen any meetings because I don't know if that's a good use of your... I think that any commissioner that requests that should be granted that. I mean, I can't, I don't think any executive director be in the position to say, you know, I'm too busy to meet with you on a regular basis. So... And Karen, has any commissioner ever, have you ever denied them that if they wanna speak with you? Yeah. No, you are always available to every commissioner. Madam Chair, I think we need to wrap up this job description and I feel like we're going to come up with lots more to be blunt. I would like to finish this job description and move on because we're gonna need to put pen to paper and come up with a red line version of it. I think that we have all said what we wanted to say in terms of that, I think that we all have an understanding on the fact that that dynamic needs to be clear in this job description. And I think wordsmithing that job description, on that point and a couple of the others that we've brought up, I think what we need to do is really put pen to paper and have a red line version of this so we can get this up and out the door quickly and get moving on this. Todd has been asked to do two jobs and I'd hate to extend that time period longer than we need to extend it. Thank you, Commissioner Brown. So Karen, in terms of that balance though, you, would you think that an executive director should limit access to the commissioners or how would you recommend, just for going forward? How would you, what would you recommend? You know, I'm just trying to think it's funny because I am working on the transition memo at the same time, like talking, but trying to communicate to the if to Todd and the interim that he might use going forward. You know, it can be something as simple as the executive director, recognizing, you know, the chair responsibility to the executive director reports to the commission. That's all five. And it's responsible for keeping all commissioners informed of ongoing issues and coordinating with the chair on specific responsibilities under NGL chapter 23 case section three, maybe something like that. I'm just trying to be helpful to recognize all of this. Does that make sense? I don't know. Well, and if there's gargoyles that need to be put up in terms of timing and what you suggest, maybe one thing, should there be more full some administrative executive director updates, would it be more efficient to do it in public? You know, so that everybody's hearing the same thing at once, because I know you say often to me, I have to have five discussions with five different commissioners. So the more in terms of public, because if that's the best way, then that might be really helpful. There's no, because no one wants to borrow you from the bar, the executive director from having conversations with the other commissioners to get the work done, right? Everybody needs to be in equally informed. So having more full some administrative executive director updates so that everybody can be asked in the same questions, is that more efficient? Well, I mean, you could, it sort of depends on what your deal is. So for, you know, I'll give an example, you know, something comes in, you get some letter or there's some issue with one of the licensees. I get it, all commissioners feel that they want to be notified or informed, especially for example, some things that end up in the press, they don't want to read about that first. And then, you know, I've told two commissioners and not all five, something like that. So that's what's challenging structurally is you've got five full-time commissioners and then there's a lot of director boards. So there's a lot of touch boards and a lot of communication.  And just tell them you do that and you do that. But it is something to think about for Todd going forward that if there are issues that I haven't asked about but maybe somebody else hasn't asked about but it's something that's important for all five to know, then we do it in an administrative update and make sure everybody's hearing the same thing at the same time because it's no one's intention to keep that information from each other. What do you think? Should we be using that tool? I think at that, it would be, you know, if you have the Venn Diagon, there are some that that works for, particularly if we're trying to get back to two a month, some things can't wait for the commission meeting. So you have to just, you know, I think one of the best things an executive director or any agency, especially one as complex as this one, it's just good judgment. You know, I think we haven't been able to trust that person that they were gonna know, you know, I need to check in, I need to talk. And I think that, you know, I guess the question is it the formal information or is it the interaction, you know, almost ad hoc communication that where sometimes things get communicated?  So an executive director needs to make the effort to communicate and check in and talk and just be available. And a lot of that is just relationship building, you know, what you want an executive or each commissioner should feel like they have a good relationship with the executive director. And that executive director is gonna communicate with them, gonna talk to them, they can, something's going on, they're gonna hear them out both, you know, both ways. That's just my opinion. It's kind of hard to quantify, you know, as you've all identified through this conversation, it's a very challenging structure with five full-time commissioners and you add on the open meeting. My ideal would be something comes up, I get the five of you on a call, let's hash it out, we'll talk it through and move on. Can't do that, that's a violation of the open meeting law. So, you know, you've gotta work on those parameters and it's challenging. That's right. One thing that you and I talked about too, and perhaps it is going to be in this executive director description, would be the idea that we work and both using a virtual platform and that it probably makes sense to restore the in-person. I know that we're close to having that capacity to do in-person, Karen, and I think that that would actually benefit because right now five of us sitting in our separate spots and looking at boxes is hard for communication and it would actually benefit, give up one more, perhaps the opportunity for them to check in with you. I see emails joining, but that's another, right now we do use only virtual. Even when we're in the office. So, maybe we think about that and that means that people should, you know, commissioners and the executive director probably needs to plan on working in-person and of course, always in public form, which is a hard thing to do, right, Karen? Mills, how are we on that? I think, Chair, we are prepared to be back in person when that is the commission's pleasure. We've worked with Charles River Media Group who helped us install some new software. So, there can be remote participants. There would be a limit on that, but we could work it out as long as we had enough notice. I would copy out that chair with just saying, I would not like to start tomorrow, to do a drive-on or two. No, we know, we know. But, and we would want to work out the case, but I think that going immediately on, that would be a recommendation for the commission to be able to meet in-person. I think it would actually benefit the process and the opportunity to see the executive director all in-person, to see the staff in-person when we're making these policy decisions. Commissioner Hill, what are you thinking? I'm digesting everything that has been put forth before us. How about in terms of managing the, anything further with respect to the staff? Todd's waiting for any advice, any advice?  I don't know if there's feedback happening in other people's computer, but I am having a very difficult time hearing people right now, which I didn't about 15 minutes ago. Well, that's weird. Are you getting it from everybody? I have a little bit of echo on Kathy's end, but not anybody else. Same here. And that may be where I'm hearing it, but I'm having, I didn't hear your question, Madam Chair. Oh, my apologies. I'm not sure why I'm getting an echo. I got my new computer, but it could just be- Right now you're echoing a little bit. Yeah. Can you just say, my apologies. Is that better, Dave? So I still hear a little bit. It's not preventative for me hearing you clearly. It's just a little wonky, but if the other commissioners are still having issues, we could try something. It might just be my new computer. I don't know. Carry on. Don't worry. Well, I think that there needs to be some additional work and editing done of the executive director's description. I'm not prepared to vote today, but if the floor of you are, that's fine. But I do think that there's work to be done in consideration to be made. Kishore O'Brien, what do you think? I think what we need to do is redline the version that we've all talked about with Karen's comments, what we've talked about. And we need to get this back on ASAP so that we can vote and get this out on the next possible meeting. And then we can figure out, individually, we can follow up with Mina and company in terms of questions about process, because I think at the same time, we're gonna wanna know how we're going forward with the vetting, whether it's gonna be an outside firm, internal, like what we're gonna do, that needs to be a priority, absolutely. I'm happy to put pen, I'm happy to raise my hand and put pen to paper if another commissioner wants to pair with me so that we get something done ASAP in terms of incorporating Karen's comments and trying to capture what we said today. So we can keep this moving. Commissioner Ryan, I'm happy to pair with you so that we keep this moving. Okay, great. Thank you for that. Anything else? Commissioner Mayer, are you all set? Commissioner Hill all set? Okay, then we have a motion to adjourn. Move to adjourn. Second. Any edits, comments, second thoughts, clarifications? Excuse me, how do you edit a motion to adjourn? I've always wondered about that one. Well, one of the elected officials I said, never ever heard it denied. Commissioner Ryan. Aye. Commissioner Hill. Aye. Commissioner Skinner. Aye. Commissioner Mayer. Aye. I vote yes, five zero. Thanks everyone.


My family and I have been in the Northern Territory for the past nine months. Life is really good. We enjoy it. It's very outdoorsy, a lot warmer than Canberra, where we're from. You know, we get out to the beach a lot, do a bit of fishing, a lot of bushwalking around here, so that's one of the positives of living up in the top end. As one of the executives in Darwin, I'm responsible for four teams and about 25 staff amongst those teams. My role is to ensure the team know what direction we're going with, provide them with leadership, a sounding board for when they've got difficult situations and help work through difficult situations with them. You can see that you're making a different stay today in the department. That's what I love about it, the challenges it offers. It's a challenging environment. You're dealing with people, you're dealing with their issues and your decisions are going to have a consequence on their lives. In that same sense, that's what's exciting about the department because the decisions that you make do have an effect on people. Or if you're at the border, you know, that can be letting somebody in or not letting them in through an airport. And that's a challenging day today. I just think that this is a department that Indigenous people should consider. I really did. When I joined the department, I didn't really know. I was lucky enough to get a cadetship but I didn't really know what the department did. I only knew what the media showed that the department does. And that's such a small speck of the different work that you can do in this department that, you know, I would encourage people to consider this as an option and a career path for themselves.


If you could train a wild hawk to catch animals in the forest, could you train an eagle to fly around Jurden Hair Stadium? The answer is yes. The South Eastern Raptor Center has more than just eagles. We do have four eagles, two bald eagles, two golden eagles, but we have 22 raptors in total, varying from the small Eastern Screech Owl all the way up to the sides of our largest golden eagle. Aria War Eagle 8 is one of our younger golden eagles. She's about eight years old. She began flying in 2018 and then officially became War Eagle 8 in 2019. Independence is our newest bald eagle. She's about five years old and she's actually going to make her debut flight in Jurden Hair Stadium the 2021 season. Spirit is our 25-year-old bald eagle. She's been flying in the stadium since 2002. We've made the decision to actually retire her. Her last flight will be on November 13th, which is actually the military appreciation game. Our eagles are trained throughout the year and what they're trained to is a lure.  Most of our work for game day comes in really throughout the year, going to the stadium and training these eagles from the beginning of July to the end of the season, Monday through Friday. People call us all the time waiting to learn more about raptors. There's a lot of good websites out there that you can actually go to to learn more about these raptors. One of them is Auburn University's Southeastern Raptor Center's website. We've got a lot of information on there, but also a lot of information can be found on the Alabama Extension's website that not just covers raptors, but covers a lot of the animals that you might see here in Alabama.


Roedd ychydig i ysgolwr i'n bach yn cyfnogi'r LPSC, dywed diolch i'r LPSC y gallwch chi ar y centa ar y stodol i fynd i'r gwahanol. Y gallwch chi gael bod nhw'n gweld gennym, dywed wedi'u gwahanol eich hwn ar reall, y gallwn i gydych chi'n gweithio étrwydau Llans, yn ystyried llaw arles, ac yn gyflawni, ac yn meddwl i'r ffordd, ac yn ystod i gynnig ffnwysgol, ac rwy'n rhaid i'r ffordd yma, a'r dynnal sy'n amlion.  Fawr iawn, ac rydyn ni'n gweithio bod yn fawr i'r gwirio. Rwy'n ddigon. Rydyn ni'n gweithio, Richard. Rydyn ni'n gweithio, rydyn ni'n gweithio. Rydyn ni'n gweithio bod yn ydym ni'n gweithio, ond rydyn ni'n gweithio bod yn yr ysgol, rydyn ni'n gweithio bod yn ysgrap ymrwyllt. Ysgrap is a student-led disoamon project developed by the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at SOAS, and it's been supported by an eminent group of academics and civil society leaders. It's been a very exciting couple of years for the Sgrap project, because we managed to get our project presented at the UN, and, following that, the UN and Sgrap jointly produced a report on general and complete disoamon. This led a couple of states to take a very serious look at the issue of general and complete disoamon, and I'm pleased to say that now we have managed to form a group of like-minded states, and with them we're working to push for a UN resolution, maybe this year or next year. The next step for the Sgrap project is to launch a global campaign to ask the UN Security Council to consider Article 26 of the UN Charter, which calls for the UN Security Council to develop a system for the regulation of armaments. So, after the cluster munitions campaign, the landmine campaign, the nuclear ban campaign, we hope that the Sgrap will be the next big campaign, and that you will help us make it happen. Thank you. Also a warm thank you for the introduction, and a warm welcome to the event that has been organised by the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy. My name is Griselda Skirsch. I am kind of on loan tonight here because I am actually in the Department of Japan and Korea, researching contemporary Japanese culture with particular respect to war memory in Japan, and I have been tasked with introducing both Setsco and the event as such. So, Setsco Thurlo was 13 when the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima, and she found herself one mile away from the epicenter of the bomb. She now lives in Toronto with her family and is committed to keeping the memory of the event alive as more and more survivors of the bomb die, and also she is touring to keep the warning as the memory of the event alive as such, as a warning to present and future generations about what horrors the atomic bomb can create. The city of Hiroshima has asked her to act as a peace ambassador throughout the world, and on the other side of the Pacific, the Canadian government has given her the order of Canada, which is the highest order to be awarded to a civilian. She has also received numerous U.S. honours, and the Japanese Foreign Ministry has also given her a commendation for her work as peace ambassador. Before I pass over to her, I will just say a couple of words about the war and its Asian brand, because I might not be well known in Europe. So forgive me for reading, but I have a very sore throat and I might not cough as much if I read. When we in Europe talk about the Second World War, Europeans by and large immediately think about the war in Europe, the Atlantic and North Africa having started in 1939 with the German invasion of Poland. From Warsaw to Dunkirk to the Battle of Britain and the invasion of the Soviet Union on the one side to the Holocaust on the other, what happened between 1939 and 1945 has become a shared European memory that differs in nuances only. Crucially, in popular imagination, the Second World War also generally tends to end with the German surrender in May 1945. What is a lot less known in Europe is what happened in Asia at that time. That there was also a war that started neither in 1939 nor did it end in May 1945. Thanks to Hollywood, most people would have heard about the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour and perhaps about the Japanese invasion of Burma and the Cersand Bridge on the River Kwai. People would know about the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki mainly because these were the first and only times, thankfully, that these weapons were deliberately dropped on fellow human beings, releasing horrors hitherto unknown. But the war in Asia did not start with the attack on Pearl Harbour nor did it start with the invasion of Burma. Neither is there a greed set of narratives when it comes to the war and it is an immensely volatile subject on which there is little agreement across Asia but also within Asia as well. For that reason, it may indeed be sometimes safer to heed Basil 40's words. Don't mention the war. The Asian theatre of the Second World War has different causes than the European one. It goes back to Japanese desires to dominate the Asian continent, commencing in the late 19th century when Japan joined the scramble for colonies after having narrowly avoided colonisation itself only shortly before. This desire to be one of the colonisers rather than being colonised resulted in the annexation of Taiwan and Korea in 1895 and 1910 respectively. In 1931, Maturia, in what is now the northeast of the People's Republic of China, was invaded, which then in turn led to the invasion of the rest of China in 1937. This resulted in an all-out war against China that is characterised by great brutality. The present-day friction between Japan and China has roots in that invasion. At the time, the invasion of China led to sanctions by the international community enthaling an oil embargo by the USA. However, being an archipelago with few natural resources, this was a deadly blow to Japan's colonialist desires and the war it was fighting in China. Only in 1940, with the signing of the tripartite pact between Japan, Germany and Italy and therefore the official formation of the axis, that the two unrelated wars begin to slowly morph into one. As the Japanese were running low on oil, the Central Command decided it would be wise to attack the US unpreparately and eliminate their navy in one go. The attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941 happened after four years of fighting in China and was a pre-emptive strike to catch the US unawares. It was a serious dent in the pride of the Americans and since the declaration of war arrived too late, after the event, became to be constructed as a treacherous act of infany and served as justification for all that was to come. At the same time, European colonies in Southeast Asia were also attacked, all in the ostensible attempt to free Asia from the colonial yoke. Although it merely meant a handover from one colonial master to a new one. Fighting the war in Southeast Asia and China, the Japanese army was thinly stretched. Similarly, the Japanese navy was no match for the American navy and in February 1945, it had all been annihilated. However, winning back the islands in the Pacific that the Japanese had occupied had proved to be incredibly costly for the Americans as the Japanese would fight back and rather die than to accept defeat. Water and meteorology had taught them that the life of an individual did not matter. There was thus concern about the human cost and invasion of the Japanese archipelago might carry even though the bombing campaign was designed to crumble civilian morale as effective, as is ineffective thus this is. Yet, as Japan is quite far away from the USA, the US bombing campaigns could only start in March 1945 when enough islands had eventually been won from the retreating Japanese. Every major city on the Japanese islands was fire bombed in the following months, often at an enormous death toll among the civilian population. All cities, except for those for which the two new weapons had been designated as potential targets, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Kyoto, Kokura, and Niigata. They were kept more or less intact so that the effects of these new weapons could be studied without having to take previous fire-bombing events into account. In 1945, in August 1945, the Japanese Imperial Army was on the brink of collapse. At the Potsdam Conference in July, the Allies had asked Japan to surrender unconditionally. Concerned about the role of the Emperor on whom the entire Japanese political philosophy rested at the time, the Japanese government did not officially react, which was taken as an insult. At that time, it had already become evident that the Alliance against Germany wasn't going to last, and that the USA and the Soviet Union were vying for spheres of influence. What happened at 815 on 6 August in Hiroshima was the beginning of the nuclear age. But it was also a statement of power by the USA towards the Soviet Union as much as it was a weapons testing with great human loss. It was a tool to end the war without having to invade Japan as the popular imagination in the US very often goes. But it is also a great human tragedy on a scale previously unknown. It is against this backdrop that the dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 and on Nagasaki on 9 August 1945 must be seen. I now would like to ask Setsko to tell us her story. Thank you very much for coming. And thank you all for being here. And, well, the floor is yours. Setsko, thank you. Thank you for your kind introduction. I just arrived from Toronto, Canada yesterday. And for a specific special event organised here, and for that purpose I came here. But I wanted to have few extra days in London to get to know the city. But instead of getting to know the city, I have the opportunity to get to know you. I hope we can have some meaningful, productive couple of hours together. Well, thank you for your invitation to this place. And thank you for your kind introduction. And well-prepared summary of the end of the Second World War in Europe and even to Japan. You have done good preparation. So I don't have to talk about that. So I will share with you my personal experience, what I think was happening at that time. As she mentioned, the war in Europe was ending up. Germany surrendered on May 8. And Stalin already promised to join the Allies three months, I think, three months after the Germany surrender. And with that kind of agreement, the war in Europe came to an end. And all the forces were focused, to be focused on the Pacific area. And stupidly, the Japanese Navy acted such as Pearl Harbor. And soon after, you see, at the beginning, in Japan was very successful, powerful, thinking American battleships and so forth. But it didn't last long. Pretty soon, Japan started going downhill. It was just a matter of time when Japan surrendered. By 1945, Japan was losing badly, and after the U.S. captured islands in the South Pacific, in Tinian and Saipan, then American could start those strategic points at the point to attack Japanese cities. So starting on, I think it was the April 1, 1945, U.S. started the carpet bombing of urban centres in Japan. Starting with Tokyo, with hundreds of B-29s warming over, and tons and tons of incendiary bombs would drop, and overnight, over 100,000 people perished. And that was the beginning of that indiscriminate attack on Japanese cities. In Nagoya, Osaka, not Kyoto, about 60 to 70% of the urban centres had been wiped out. What Hiroshima happened to be, the 10th largest city of Japan at that time. So we started wondering, my goodness, even smaller cities had been bombed, but we haven't. What plan, what special secret plan U.S. has for us? All kinds of rumors spread. Anyway, little did we know that the United States had already selected Hiroshima as a target city, and had warned the military not to attack Hiroshima, keep Hiroshima intact, while 60, 70% of the urban centres had been already attacked and ended up with a pile of ashes and rubbles. So you can imagine we were living with anxiety and fear, just waiting for the attack. So day after we heard the siren, the B-29 was flying over us practically every day, but they just came and made circles and then went away. It was a very spooky experience for us. I better tell you what had already been explained. I was a 13-year-old grade 8 student in the girls' school, and about three weeks prior to that date, we had been recruited to work as a volunteer for the Army headquarters. We were to be trained as secret message decoders. On August 6, 1945, that very day happened to be Monday, the very first day to work as a full-fledged decoding assistant. I met about 30 other girls in my group in front of the Hiroshima Station. I led the group, left, right, left, like in March, that kind of mentalistic thing at the century. I had to go something like that. But anyway, at eight o'clock, we were on the second floor of the wooden building, and the assembly started. Major Yonai, who was responsible for us, said that you girls spent three weeks to get the decent training and such and such. This is the day you start proving your patriotism and loyalty to the emperor. We said, yes, sir, we will. At that moment, I saw the bluish-white flush outside the window. And I still have the sensation of flying up in the air. You see, by the strong blast generated by the bomb, all the buildings were collapsing. Obviously, the building I was in was collapsing. And together with that building, my body was falling down. I don't know how long I was unconscious, but when I regained the consciousness in the total darkness and silence, I found myself incapable of moving. I was pinned under the collapsed building. So I knew I was faced with death. This is it. Americans finally got us. That thought crossed my mind. I was faced with death, but I was not panic-stricken. It's strange to look back, to think back, that how calm and serene I was facing possible death. Then I started hearing faint voices of the girls. Mother helped me. God helped me, so I knew I was surrounded by the girls. Then all of a sudden, the strong male voice said, I'm trying to free you. Keep pushing, keep moving, keep kicking. And you see the sun ray coming through that opening, escaped toward that direction as quickly as possible, crawl, and he was touching my left shoulder from behind. So this man, obviously the soldier at the headquarter, somebody who rescued my life, I never saw his face. It was just a voice in the darkness. By the time I came out of the building, or the rubble, shall I say, the rubble was on fire, I looked back and for a second I thought about other girls, but I could not get back. But I did see two other girls who managed to escape. So three of us were together. And although it happened in the morning, it was dark when I came out, perhaps because of the smoke and particles in the air which was rising together with the mushroom cloud. And as my eyes got used to the darkness, I started seeing the moving dark objects nearing me. Then the soldier said that you girls, join that group of people and escape to the nearby hills. I waited and see some more people coming closer to me. And I called them, procession of ghosts, they were slowly shuffling from the centre part of the city to where I was and to the further out. The woman's hair was standing straight up, they were burned, blackened and swollen, and skin and flesh were hanging from their bones and they were just walking like that, walking not just simply shuffling slowly. And some were carrying their own eyeballs and as they collapsed, their stomach burst open and intestine stretching out. We three girls joined this procession of ghosts. As the soldier told us, we learned to step over the dead bodies and dying people and escape to the nearby hill. At the foot of the hill, there was an army training ground about two football fields put together, quite a large space. By the time we got there, the place was packed with the dead bodies and seriously injured people. In a situation like that, you would imagine perhaps people screaming for help, running, shouting, but that's not what I remember. It was eerie stillness of silence. All I heard was just whistling voices. Water please, please give me water. Every single person seemed to be asking for water. So when we got to the foot of the hill, we looked around and we looked ourselves and although we were covered with blood and dirt, but we were mobile, we were functioning decently, so we three girls went to the nearby stream, washed off the dirt and blood, and we tore off the blouses and soaked the cloth into this water and then dashed back to the dying people, injured people, and put the wet cloth over the mouth and they just suck in the moisture. Look at you and thank you. And then we kept ourselves busy all day doing that. There were no buckets and no cups to carry the water. That was the only way we could do anything to help dying people. I quickly looked around and see if there were any healthcare professionals. In that huge place, there was no doctor, no nurses. Of course, they themselves, about 80% or 90% of the healthcare professionals were killed, I understand. But the remaining surviving healthcare professionals were helping at other places, not where I was. So hundreds and thousands of people in that training ground where I was, nobody with any knowledge of caring for the injured dying people, nobody was there. Just a little bit of so-called rescue or support work which three girls did, just give them the wet cloth. That was a level of rescue operation we were able to offer. We did that all day when the darkness fell with three girls just sat on the hill together with hundreds of thousands of other people, citizens who escaped to that place. And we girls just sat there all night just watching the entire city burn, feeling numb, stunned from the massive and grotesque kind of death and suffering we had witnessed. There was no emotional reaction as we sat there, as I sat there all night. That's the end of my day, that day. Well, next morning, the soldier came around with a megaphone and said, is there a Setscona camera? Is there a Setscona camera? I said, here I am. Your parents are here to look for you. It was a surprise. Apparently, my father left very early that Monday morning. It was a free day for him.  So he went out of the city. He went near Miyajima. That's the island in the inland sea. And near there, he was fishing. And he saw the rising mushroom cloud. So he knew something happened in Hiroshima. So he quickly came back, I was told. My mother was doing the dishes after the breakfast. And she too was buried, but she was dug out. And she was able to escape. And she went to outside of the city to her brother's place. I don't know how my father and my parents communicated or how they came to get together. But the next morning, they were together. And they told me, my sister, who came back to the city the night before, with her four-year-old child, was burned very badly. You see, her husband was away to the war. And this child was so important to make sure he's going to be protected from the anticipated air raid. She moved out of the city. But unfortunately, the night before she came back to the city and to see us and next day to keep the doctor's appointment. So at that moment, she and the child were walking over the bridge near the center of the city. And there was nothing to protect them between the explosion themselves. Somehow, it's going to be too long, so I won't tell you all the detail how she escaped. But somehow, she managed to come back to where our house had stood. And from there, she got the help. And she escaped to near where I was. And she was resting at the relative summer house. So we knew where they were. So my parents and I went and joined them. And what a sight. My sister's body was swollen about twice, almost three times larger than normal body. My mother said that she could hardly recognize her by appearance. It was beyond recognition. But she could recognize her voice. And she could recognize her hairpin special, on-aid hairpin she was wearing. Yes, she and the child were both so blackened. And both of them, like other people, just begging for water. But by the time we were ready to give them the water, somehow the jaws and the face, everything was swollen. So we had a hard time to open their mouths to put the drops of water into their mouths. But my sister, they lived for about four days and until the agony was ended by death.  And with a bumble pulse, they kept turning the burning body. Hey, stomach is half burned. Brain is not quite burned yet. Such crude remarks as they worked. There was a 13-year-old child just standing, just feeling numbed, not feeling anything. And perhaps this was the most painful memory of all of that day because that was supposed to be a cremation of human beings. There was no dignity of human beings, just like insects or animals or something. But the memory of that stayed with me for a long time. It troubled me. I remember standing there, just standing there, just looking at it, not feeling anything, not having drops of tears. I started wondering what kind of human being I was. What kind of human being am I? My dear sister, but I couldn't even shed any tears. That memory troubled me for a long time until years later when I went to university and started studying psychology and started studying how human beings behaved in the ultimate condition like that. And how any books were written. But then there is American professor Robert Lifton came to Hiroshima and interviewed the survivors. And he did publish a book, Death in Life. I'm sure some of you have heard about it and read about it. Anyway, in his book, he talks about the cessation of emotion in a situation like that. Cognitive function remains. If the fire starts here, I escape that way, I could think. But I could not respond emotionally because of the massive and grotesque external stimuli coming into our psyche. So this was automatically closing off and the psyche closing. Anyway, he termed that terminology. But anyway, often the psychological aspect is hardly any mentioned in the survivors' testimony. But I did feel very kindly about it. So I just mentioned it, but I have to move on. My sister-in-law is still missing. She was a teacher guiding the students' work. At that time, on that day, in the center part of the city, there were several thousand grade seven and grade eight students. They were all mobilized from all the high schools from the city. And they were to do the work for the army and the city government in order to establish the fire break or fire lane. They were there to do the manual labour. And it was a hot morning. Some kids had the top shirts off and so on right below the explosion. Several thousand grade seven and eight students. And they are the one who simply vaporize, carbonize. Actually, I have a list of 351 names of my girls' friends from my school.  I was one mile away and I was inside the building and I was protected by the collapsed building. But those people were just in the open under the 4,000 degrees Celsius heat. And that just vaporized them. And my sister-in-law was there and we could never find her body. The unique way many people died is by the effect of radiation. We rejoiced when we got the news my favorite uncle and aunt were okay. They had no external injury. So after my sister and her child died, my parents went over there to help them. But they found my uncle and his wife just developing purple spots all over the body. That was a sure sign they were going to die. According to my mother's description, their body, their internal organs seemed to be liquefied, rotting and coming out of thick black liquid. She used everything as a diaper. But those are only two individuals of hundreds of thousands of people in the city. That's how they died. So the effects of the blast and the heat, I told about 4,000 degrees Celsius at the ground level, way at the center of the explosion that was over a million degrees, I understand. By the time that fire broke in, descended to the ground level at 4,000 degrees. So the effects of radiation, the heat and the blast, and that killed about 1,440,000 people of Hiroshima by the end of that year. And at that time, about 80% of more of the inhabitants of Hiroshima were non-combatant civilians, children, women, and elderly. Because the able-bodied men were out fighting at the war. So it was an indiscriminate attack of civilians, non-combatant, which was against international law. I'm sure you have read about common symptoms and so on. I'll just briefly say that I lost my hair, not entirely, but many girls became completely bald. They had to come to school wearing the bonnet or hiding with the scarves. Many people who suffered from the burn ended up having a very thick, unsightly scar. It was extremely difficult for them people to go out on the street. They just hid themselves inside. And some women who were pregnant at that time were exposed to radiation. So they produced deformed babies and gossip like that spread fast. So anybody who was in Hiroshima who had been exposed to radiation, they were to be avoided because you get contaminated. Well, we didn't have the words contamination at that time. You don't want to catch some poison those people in the city got. So those people had trouble finding employment and finding a marriage partner, discrimination, all kinds. And the doctors had a very difficult time because nobody knew how the radiation affected the human body. So if people had high fever, some doctors thought maybe that was scarlet fever. They didn't know what to do. And of course, even if they knew there was no medication, no first aid supplies. Well, I must jump all over the place. So Hiroshima happened on August 6. Three days later Nagasaki happened on the 15th. The surrender finally, the surrender took place. You can imagine the kind of psychosocial political chaos we have to go through in addition to the physical devastation caused by atomic bomb. So early in September, General MacArthur, Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces arrived and the Emperor hid himself somewhere. General MacArthur became the all-powerful leader for Japan. He said, I came to Japan with two specific goals. One is to deep militarize Japan and secondly to democratize Japan. And he achieved quite a bit of it. For example, reform in agricultural system, labor movement in the finance and educational system. And by giving women the right to be free, to be able to vote for the first time. By the way, at the first general election, I think it was 47 members of parliament they elected. Anyway, so General MacArthur did some good things, yes? But as far as Hiroshima and Nagasaki were concerned, he did something contrary to what he said he was going to do. First of all, the establishment of ABCC, atomic bomb casualty commission. People were so happy, finally we get the supply, the medication. And somebody with medical knowledge. So Japanese doctors looked for support from American specialists. But the only purpose for that agency was, the one in Hiroshima by the way, another one in Nagasaki. The only purpose for that organization was to study the effects of radiation on human body. You can imagine how the survivors felt. Hey, we were guinea pig, not only once, twice. First as a target, second as a subject for medical research. That kind of thing is happening. And another example is that the censorship of media, if the newspaper like that about the human suffering caused by that experience. Well, that was disadvantageous to allied forces, to the occupation forces. Therefore, that had to be suppressed. And not only that, they started confiscating personal things. People wrote diaries. People had correspondence. Some people wanted to express their pains and agony in their hearts, in the form of haiku or Japanese literary style. Photographs, films, even medical information. All those things were confiscated. 32,000 items in all were confiscated. They were shipped back to the United States. Those are just a few examples to show how survivors suffered under the occupation. Yes, physical devastation, but psychological, sociological, political, all kinds of stressful situations. You just have to use your imagination. I don't have time to go into that detail. What time is it? OK, OK. I think the important thing I have to say here is that, of course, it was a huge trauma for every one of us who lived in the city, or the people, kindhearted people who came from outside the city to the city, to try to help injured people. And they, too, become the hibachia survivors because they were exposed to radiation by entering into the city. So the number of survivors just expanded. What am I going to say? I think the important thing is that, in spite of all that unspeakable horror existence, somehow survivors, many of them were able to come out of the numb condition and found the meaning in their survival. It was not easy. It took time, and that time depended on the individual strength of the people. But they came to see their purpose in surviving is to speak out to the world about the horror of indiscriminate attack by the weapon of mass destruction. And this kind of inhumane, immoral, and cruel experience should never be experienced by another human being. This was the firm resolve survivors able to gain. So with this conviction, and we started speaking out around the world, we've been doing this several decades from now. Now, my activism, of course, everybody, well, the city became almost pacifist city. Everybody was for peace. After all, we had 15 years of war and fighting, and we rejoiced the peace. And we vowed to the people who perished will do our very best to make sure this would not happen again. That was our vow. Well, I finished university in 1954 and got a scholarship to study social work in United States. And 1954 was a special year for the human calendar. United States were testing even more destructive bomb, hydrogen bomb. And the people in Marshall Islands were suffering the similar condition as Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was a huge public health program. And the people had to leave the islands, escape to other islands and so forth, because islands became inhabitable. So when I got to the United States, the press interviewed me. And asked my opinion about Hiroshima experience and what was happening then, the people suffering in the Marshall Islands. And fresh out of college, I guess I was very naive. I told them what I thought very openly. And that was not a very good thing for them to hear, I suppose. It was published next day, and I started receiving unsigned hate letter.  Who is giving you the scholarship? You go home. Kind of threatening letters started coming to university. So the president had to get involved and to protect me. I couldn't go to the classroom. You know, this happened the very first week after arrival to the United States. And they angry at me because I spoke out what I thought was the truth. They didn't see, they had a completely different idea. What am I going to do? Am I going to be able to survive here? Or am I going to pretend I never know anything about atomic bombing? Believe me, it was the loneliest time in a foreign country. But after a week of soul searching, I came out with a stronger commitment, stronger resolve that if I don't speak out about the horror of nuclear war, who can? It is my moral imperative, no matter what the circumstance may be. So I'm glad that happened. Now I wanted to talk about my life in North America, in the United States and Canada, and it was a pretty lonely time. Whatever I say sounded like a long voice in the wilderness. But I would skip that. Well, I have been speaking to a lot of people, thousands, tens of thousands of people in schools, universities, women's groups, church groups, everywhere. It has nothing easy. But right now I am feeling very good. I am euphoric and I want to share that. Catherine, would you like to come up and you quickly tell them why we are so excited about it? I think you can speak faster than me. We have been working together. And this is good news for all of us humanity. I want you to remember this. This is happening on 27th of this month. Can you quickly tell them? Good evening, everyone. My name is Kathleen Sullivan and I have the honor and pleasure of working with Setsuko over many years through an organization called Heba Cusha Stories. We bring atomic bomb survivors into primarily high schools in the New York metro area. And just briefly, we heard mentioned by the representative from Scrap, which sounds like an excellent initiative about the nuclear weapons ban that is upon us next week. Monday starting next Monday at the United Nations, there will be over 100 member states that are meeting to negotiate a nuclear weapons ban treaty. Unfortunately, it's not really been much in the media in nuclear weapons countries. Although there's been some media reports here in the UK, the UK is boycotting the meeting. The US, of course, is boycotting the meeting as well. And the Ban Treaty initiative came out of the humanitarian initiative. Can I just see who in the audience knows about the humanitarian initiative that is leading to this ban treaty negotiations? So, basically, we've been stuck in a narrative about the military industrial complex, about the security doctrine of deterrence, where nuclear powers basically talk about what weapons they have, where they're located, what they can do. And although activists, academics, humanitarians have always been speaking about the humanitarian consequences of nuclear weapons, it's only in the last five years that that narrative has shifted at the level of states' parties. So we now, since the first humanitarian consequences conference, which happened in 2013 in Norway, which was hosted by the Norwegian government, it was attended by several member states of the United Nations, where non-nuclear weapon countries started focusing on the humanitarian impacts of nuclear weapons. And this primarily arrived from a piece of research that came out of the International Committee for the Red Cross, which said we cannot respond to a city on fire. And to this, I commend you to the research of Lynn Eden, who did very important work around the reality of firestorms resulting from nuclear explosions. The trajectory of the firestorm that is given to us was way below what Lynn's research suggests. For example, if a modern-day nuclear weapon were exploded over London, the firestorm that would ensue would be 50 miles in radius. And I'm sure we all understand that nothing can survive a firestorm and that's only the first ring of destruction that doesn't take into consideration the radiation that Setsuko has been speaking about. So with the conference in 2013, there was a follow-on event in Nayarit in Mexico, which was hosted by the Mexican government. And this was in February 2014, where the chair of that conference said that the Nayarit gathering was the point of no return. And this was really when non-nuclear weapon countries were saying, we are no longer going to be bullied by the nuclear weapon states, who were very happy to sit behind their so-called commitments under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, where under Article 6 of that treaty, nuclear weapon states promised to disarm at an early date. And later in 2014, we had the third conference in Vienna hosted by the Austrian government. And from this, we received what was called the Austrian Pledge, later named the Humanitarian Pledge. And that was signed on by 127 nations. This is a lot of treaty gobbledygoup policy, wonkish talk, but what we're really seeing is a movement that is being led by non-nuclear weapon states and NGOs, specifically the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons. And as a result of these three meetings, there came an open-ended working group on multilateral disarmament. And from that came a resolution in the General Assembly to inaugurate this banned treaty process. So it's hugely exciting. Unfortunately, we just learned two days ago that China, one of the only nuclear weapon states that was going to attend the negotiations, will not be on hand. But next week we have the first week, and then the last week of June, and the first two weeks of July are the substantive weeks. So at the end of next week, there will be a draft treaty text for a nuclear weapons ban. So people might say, well, gosh, if you don't have the nuclear weapon states in the room, what difference does it make? But I'm sure that many of you in the room will remember Princess Diana in the mine clearing fields when she was coming out as an activist against land mines. And yes, when the land mines ban was enacted, the countries that were producing and using land mines were not part of that initial process, but it was the stigmatization and the public education that created the impetus for the land mines ban treaty. And now we are mostly in compliance. The production has completely scaled down, although there is still land mines being used in the demilitarized zone between North and South Korea, but we are really seeing a sea change in disarmament diplomacy. And it is through a collaboration between non-nuclear weapon states and NGOs. And I have to say that Setsuko has been the voice of conscience for this movement and other atomic bomb survivors. So it's been extraordinarily moving to see opportunity such as this arise to create a legally binding treaty for the banning of nuclear weapons while the Hibaksha are still with us. I hope I won't get in trouble by telling you that Setsuko is 85 years old. She is, sorry, she's been working tirelessly the whole of her life. At the end of this week, she will receive the Amadea Muslim Peace Prize for her work, her tireless work for peace and disarmament. And I think that you all can agree that who you see before you is a force of nature and a hugely inspirational person. So the fact that Hibaksha, such as Setsuko, and I would say individually as one of the voices of ICANN, can see something like this happen in her lifetime is exceptional because those of us who work on this issue worry deeply about what will happen if the nuclear catastrophe continues and we lose that first-hand witness. So thank you very much for the opportunity to share that with you.


Income tax 2022-2023, depreciation of rental property basics part number one. Let's do some wealth preservation with some tax preparation. Most of this information comes from publication 527 Residential Rental Property including Rental of Vacation Homes Taxure 2022 you can find on the IRS website IRS.gov IRS.gov. Looking at the income tax formula we're focused on line one income. Remember in the first half of the income tax formula is in essence an income statement but just an outline other forms and schedules flowing into these line items. One of those the Schedule E basically an income statement in and of itself with rental income minus rental expenses. The net rental income flowing into line one income of the income tax formula. We're focused now on depreciation which is a very key component when we're talking about rental property because the cost of the property is going to be one of the major costs and depreciation related to that cost will be one of the major expenses which will have a significant and material impact on the income taxes for the rental property. Support accounting instruction by clicking the link below giving you a free month membership to all of the content on our website broken out by category further broken out by course. Each course then organized in a logical reasonable fashion making it much more easy to find what you need than can be done on a YouTube page. We also include added resources such as Excel practice problems PDF files and more like QuickBooks backup files when applicable. So once again click the link below for a free month membership to our website and all the content on it. Now note as we talked about in prior presentations oftentimes the rental property will be accounted for using a cashed based system and that's because we don't have anything requiring us to basically convert to an accrual system such as tracking inventory or something like that. But even if we're using a cashed based system there are some times that we have to deviate from that because the tax code tells us we have to to an accrual system and the most complete clear component of that or the most clear example of that would be with the property itself. So if you buy a piece of property if you buy a piece of a house a house that you're going to be renting for example then even if you paid completely cash for it it would be a huge distortion between the time frame that you used the property in order to generate revenue and the time frame that you actually paid for the property if you were able to depreciate deduct the cost of the property when you purchase it. So instead we have to do an accrual type thing which is to put it on the books as an asset an investment in essence an asset that's going to help us generate revenue in the future and then depreciate the cost over the useful life which is generally a pretty long extended time frame so there's this big difference in terms of the timing of when we get to get the benefit of the cost of the purchase of the property. Now note this is similar concept to depreciation of like equipment for example but it's a little bit different as well it could be confusing when we think about real estate because when you think about depreciating a piece of equipment like a forklift then clearly when you buy the forklift the expectation is that the forklift will go down in value over the life of the forklift and eventually it'll be obsolete useless and you're trying to basically allocate allocate blame the cost over the useful life when you're using that forklift to generate revenue same concept with depreciation we're buying the building so that we can use it consume it and generate revenue as we do so in the form of rent and the building does deteriorate go down in value over time but it's quite likely that we're also investing in the property in hopes that it goes up in value due to if not the wear and tear in the building just the location of the building so real estate is is unique in that case or at least different than most other depreciable property because most other depreciable property we expected to go down in value real estate we're hoping it actually goes up in value even though we're depreciating it over time alright that said depreciation of rental property you recover the cost of income producing property through yearly tax deductions you do this by depreciating the property that is by deducting some of the cost each year on your tax return so three factors determine how much depreciation you can deduct each year one your basis in the property to the recovery period for the property and three the depreciation as a depreciation method you use let's break that down a little bit more here if we buy a piece of rental property when you we from the tax per payer perspective the general rule would be that we would like to get the deduction sooner rather than later because of the time value of money so first question can I can I just depreciate can I just expense it when I buy it answer tax code says no because you have to put it on the books as an asset and then depreciate it and then well then the next question is well one of you know what do I have to include in the cost of the property is there anything that I could break out of the cost of the property and basically expense in the current time period so I can get the benefit sooner that's one of the questions we have and if we put it on the books as an asset then when do I get the benefit when do I get to allocate those those costs and that's going to be dependent on the number of years that we're going to be depreciating this thing over which is going to be determined primarily by the tax code and the depreciation method that we're going to be using the most common method being a straight line method other common methods for you know types of property or like double declining method trying to depreciate more upfront if we were able to do an accelerated method double declining versus straight line we would typically opt for that remembering that in the tax code our goal as a tax payer is usually to pay as less tax as possible which means we would like to get the deductions as soon as possible so if we can depreciate more upfront then later then that would be good so that's always kind of our mindset and then the tax code is kind of where we have to go to see how much they're going to restrict us to do from doing what we want to do all right so your bit your your basis in the property is basically you could think of like the adjusted cost of the property the things that you have to include and the cost of the property that you're going to then not be able to expense but rather have to depreciate over time the recovery period of the property the number of years that you're going to have to depreciate this thing over the depreciation method is it going to be a straight line method or double declining method even depreciation over the number of years or accelerated depreciation more in the current years than later years okay you can't simply deduct your mortgage or principal payments or the cost of furniture fixtures and equipments as expense so you can deduct depreciation only on the part of your property used for rental purposes so if you have a piece of property you're using part of it for rent and part of it for personal then obviously you can't depreciate the whole piece of property gets confusing then because you got one piece of property that you're going to have to divvy up in some way to calculate the depreciation just to wind back up over here notice they said you can't simply deduct your mortgage or principal payments so sometimes you might think the loan on the home kind of confuses people sometimes because you might be thinking well this goes back to the the statement of people often saying well I don't own the property the bank owns 80% of the property because they financed 80% of the property and originally I think that statement was an overstatement people are saying they're trying to be like modest or basically overstate by saying hey look I don't own the property the bank owns the property because I got a loan for 80% of it but that's not really the case of course because the bank can't tell you what to do with the rental property the bank doesn't sit at the kitchen table and tell you hey that rental property you've got to paint it green or something like that they're not making the decisions the bank only has recourse to the property if you default on the loan so what you have is ownership of the property and a responsibility to pay the loan the collateral on the loan being the property but sometimes people get confused and say well you know if the bank owns the property can't I deduct my whole mortgage payment not just the interest portion that would be a rent on the purchasing power but the whole payment of the mortgage and it's like well no you can't deduct the whole payment of the mortgage because that's a liability you're paying down the loan right on that so that's paying down the loan you might be you can deduct most likely the interest which is the rent on the purchasing power that you needed in order to purchase the property but not the payment of the principal of the loan okay so you can deduct depreciation only on the part of your property used for rental expenses depreciation reduces your basis for figuring gain or loss on a later sale or exchange what does that mean the basis in the property you can think of as in essence your cost of the property your adjusted cost which you had to include and then depreciate over time as you depreciate the property the book value of the property goes down so if you had 100,000 piece of property you depreciated 10,000 now it's got a nine thousand dollar basis that nine thousand ninety thousand dollars is still something you expect to get benefit from how you expect it to be depreciated until it goes down to zero over the useful life as you rent the property or when you sell the property it's going to lower the amount of gain that you're going to have because the gain is calculated as sales price minus the adjusted basis of the property so as a taxpayer we would like the basis to be as high as it could to some degree in other words when we put the property on the books we would like to expense it right off the bat and get that benefit now but they won't let us do that so we have to put it on the books as an asset and then at that point we would like the asset to be have as big a basis as possible in general because that allows us then to depreciate it over time or if we sell it it decreases the value of the gain the number of the gain of the amount of the gain and we pay taxes on gains because that would be like income or it increases the loss that we have at the sales which means could be good for taxes losses because we might be able to take them against other types of income so you may have to use form four five six two to figure and report your depreciation see which forms to use in chapter three also see publication nine four six all right the section one seventy nine deduction what about these big year one deductions that we often get when we're talking about equipment so the section one seventy nine deduction is a means of recovering part or all of the cost of certain of certain qualifying property in the year you place the property in service so it is separate from your depreciation deduction you can see chapter two of publication nine four six for more information about claiming this deduction then we've got the alternative minimum tax the AMT so if you use accelerated depreciation you may be subject to AMT alternative minimum tax accelerated depreciation like a double declining method kind of system allows you to deduct more depreciation earlier in the recovery period then you could deduct using a straight line method same deduction each year so in other words you have more deduction on the front end than the back end most of the makers depreciation for like equipment is a double declining kind of balance in that way not a straight line method so the prescribed appreciation methods for rental real estate aren't accelerated so with real estate usually you're you're using the straight line kind of system so depreciation deduction isn't adjusted for the AMT in other words if you used an accelerated depreciation you might be more likely to be subject to the AMT however at this point in time generally the tax code is going to basically require you most of the time to be using like a straight line method not an accelerated method for the depreciation however accelerated methods are generally used for other property connected with rental activities for example appliances and wall to wall carpeting so that kind of stuff might have might have accelerated depreciation methods alright so to find out if you are subject to the AMT see the instructions for form 6251 so the basics the following section discusses the information you will need to have about the rental property and the decisions to be made before figuring your depreciation deduction what rental property can be depreciated you can depreciate your property if it meets all the following requirements you own the property so obviously it's your property you're not renting it you use the property in your business or income producing activity such as rental property so you're using the property not for personal use you're not living in it or not the rental part of it at least you're renting it you're trying to generate revenue with it so the property has a determinable use full life so you can see how long it's going to be living for if it's rental property you're typically going to get that from the tax code the property is expected to last more than one year which of course you would expect to be the case if it was rental property property you own so what does that mean to claim depreciation you must usually be the owner of the property you are considered to be the owner of the property even if it's subject to debt so that gets back to that statement again of people saying I don't own the property the bank owns the property that's not technically true that's not technically true you took out a loan with the bank so that you can get the capital to buy the property and the property is basically collateral if you default on the loan the bank is not sitting at the kitchen table the bank has no say with their 80% of the property value loan that you have to tell you what color to paint the living room or anything like that so you have you have those two things are basically separate so you own the property even if you have debt out with it all right rented property generally if you pay rent for property you can't depreciate the property usually only the owner can depreciate it however if you make permanent improvements to lease property you may be able to depreciate the improvements so in other words if you rent the property if you're renting it then you can't take like like if I'm in a business or something like that and and I and I rent my office my office space well I can't take I can't take the depreciation on the office space because I don't own the office space I can take the rent on the office space however if I purchase the office space then then you expect I wouldn't have any rent but I would have the ownership of the building that I own it now and I would be depreciating the building as opposed to having the rent now if I rent the building and then I make substantial improvements to the building subject to to improve it to my specifications then maybe even though I'm renting the building I might be able to depreciate those kind of improvements or something like that alright see additions to improvements to property later in this chapter under recovery periods under GDS corporative apartments so if you are a tenant stockholder in a corporative housing corporation and rent your corporative apartment to others you can depreciate your stock in the corporation so C chapter 4 property having a determinable useful life to be depreciated your property must have a determinable useful life so this means that it must be something that wears out decays gets used up becomes obsolete or loses its value from natural causes so when we think about most things that we depreciate that is the case right because if you depreciate a piece of equipment you depreciate a forklift you depreciate you know those those things are going to go down in value when you talk about a building the building goes down in value it deteriorates over time although the land it's sitting on at least in terms of human timeframes doesn't really go down in value doesn't the dirt doesn't become more dirty it doesn't deteriorate down beyond that point in time and human life spans therefore we depreciate the building generally not the land it becomes important then to be breaking out the cost of the property we we have between the building and the land and again we have this weird dynamic with the real estate that we're hoping that although the building will deteriorate over time and the land is is what it is it's not going to go up or down in terms of its its deterioration over human life spans that the property itself might go up due to due to more people or something like that or due to whatever location location location right which is that weird dynamic we don't have most times with other depreciable property so what rental property can't be depreciated certain property can't be depreciated this includes land and certain accepted property so note that some property can't be depreciated so when we buy the real estate we have to break out between building and land which is an important breakout because the building is something we can depreciate the land isn't when you buy property you might be saying hey look I don't buy the property and buy the land and then pay a separate write a separate check for the building that's not how it's done it's a package deal how am I going to do that well you might look at the property taxes or something a format to break it out but we have to have some method to break it out because the property on the books is going to have land which is not depreciable building is depreciable from our perspective what do we want we want to allocate the cost to lower the taxes so I want to expense it in the current time frame if I can to get as big an expense as I can but they won't let me do that I have to put it on the books as an asset okay if I'm going to put it on the books as an asset I want to depreciate it as soon as I can to get the benefit as soon as I can but the land they're not going to let me depreciate it at all I'm not going to get the cost of now I'm not going to get a benefit from it until I sell it at which point it'll lower the amount of gain or increase the amount of loss on the sales price but the building at least I get to depreciate that over a long extended period of time and that'll be a benefit for taxes therefore and the taxpayer perspective we have an incentive to try to overpopulate you know the the amount of the allocation to the building which we're going to get a sooner tax benefit from then the land so we got to be careful we have it's an estimate so we want to make sure that we have a proper estimate but you can see where the incentives lie it would be incentivizing us to try to over estimate the building side to the land side all right land you can't you can't depreciate the cost of land because land generally doesn't wear out become obsolete or get used up but if it does the loss is is accounted for upon disposition so the cost of clearing grading planting and landscaping are usually all part of the cost of land and can't be depreciated you may however be able to depreciate certain land preparation costs if the cost are so closely associated with other depreciable property that you can determine a life for them along with the life of the associated property all right example example example you build a new house to use use as a rental and paid for for guard for grading clearing and seeding and planting bushes and trees some of the bushes and trees were planted right next to the house while others were planted around the outer border of the lot so if you placed the house you would have to destroy the you if you replaced the house you would have to destroy the bushes trees right next to it so now you paid for this landscaping stuff but the land it's right next to the building and therefore its life is going to be contingent on keeping the building in place so these bushes and trees are closely associated with the house so they have a determinable useful life therefore you can depreciate them add your other land preparation costs to the basis of your land because they have no determinable life and you can't depreciate them so add your other land preparation costs to the basis of your land because they have no determinable life and you can't depreciate them okay accepted property even if the property meets all the requirements listed earlier under what rental property can be depreciated you can't depreciate the following property so property placed in service and disposed of or taken out of business use in the same year that would be an unusual situation you would expect something funny would be going on if that happened equipment used to build capital improvements so you must add otherwise allowable depreciation on the equipment during the period of construction to the basis of your improvements in other words if you're actually building the building it gets a little bit confusing because now you're not just buying the building the cost the building isn't just the cost you're constructing the building and the stuff that was used to construct the building is you would think something that has to be not expense but rather be accumulated as the cost of the building so for more information see chapter 1 of publication 946 on that when does depreciation begin and end you begin to depreciate your rental property when you place it in service for the production of income when you start to use the stuff so you stop depreciating it either when you have fully recovered your cost or other basis or when you retire it from service whichever happens first so clearly if we're looking at property here what we're trying to do is generate revenue with it so when we place it in service to help us to generate revenue you would think that's when the depreciation would be you know starting on it we stop the depreciation when it's been fully recovered if we're talking about some type of rental property that the depreciation period is going to be a long time so if we bought it for $100,000 then we can't get the benefit of the deduction up front we want the depreciation as soon as possible we'll typically have to have a straight line depreciation once that $100,000 has been fully allocated through depreciation we can no longer depreciated because now we have allocated the cost fully if we further depreciated it our adjusted basis would be negative which shouldn't theoretically be possible or we might retire the property meaning sell it most likely before it's been fully depreciated at which point in time we stop depreciating it and we take the undepreciated portion the adjusted cost the adjusted basis into consideration to calculate the gain or the loss the lower the basis is in the property after we've depreciated it the more likely we're going to have a gain which will have a negative tax implication the higher the depreciation is the adjusted basis I mean is at the time we sell it then the more likely is it is that we're going to have a lesser of a gain which would be good for taxes or a greater loss which could be good for taxes so placed in service you place property in service in a rental activity when it is ready and available for a specific use in that activity so you might say well what look I placed it in service to rent but I don't have anybody in it yet but I'm totally trying to get someone in there or something like that so there's questions in terms of what does it exactly mean when you're placed it in service so even if you aren't using the property it is in service when it is ready and available for its specific use example one on November 22nd of last year you purchased a dishwasher for your rental property the appliance was delivered on December 7th but wasn't installed and ready for use until January 3rd of this year because the dishwasher wasn't ready for use last year it isn't considered placed in service until this year it's like no I bought it at the end of the year cause I wanted to get the depreciation in last year November and now they won't let me do it because it wasn't ready to go yet those dang installers cost me anyways if the appliance had been installed and ready for use when it was delivered in December of last year it would have been considered placed in service in December those dang installers messed it all up messed up my whole cost me taxes so even if it wasn't actually used until this year okay example 2 on April 6th you purchased a house to use as residential rental property you made extensive repairs to the house and had it ready for rent on July 5th so you begin to advertise the house for rent on July or in July and actually rented it beginning September 1st so the house is considered placed in service in July even though there's no one in it until September when it was ready and available for rent so you can begin depreciating the house in July example 3 you moved from your home in July during August and September you made several repairs to the house so on October 1st you listed the property for rent with a real estate company which rented it on December 1st the property is considered placed in service on October 1st the date when it was available for rent even though no one was in it yet at that point in time it was ready to go conversion to business use now we have some unique problems with regards to a conversion because I mean if you think about how you're going to acquire the rental property the rental property either you buy rental property which is pretty straightforward with determining the basis because that's basically going to start in essence the cost of the property and everything that was involved in purchasing the property you can build the property so you might buy a piece of land and then you have to take off whatever is on the land and then build a building on top of it which gets quite different of a scenario because then everything that you did to build up the building and what not has to be calculated as part of the building and then all the stuff you had to do the land to prep it is part of the land and so on so that would be a construction situation however you may have already owned the property for personal use like your house or something and then you're going to move or something like that and convert it from personal to rental property in that case the problem is that you don't know exactly what the basis is because your personal property your house although you get to deduct on schedule A the mortgage interest and the real estate taxes you haven't been depreciating over time because you don't get a benefit from depreciating because it's a personal property so you don't really have an adjusted basis at this point in time and the value of the house has changed over time because of circumstances so what is going to be the basis of the property when you put it on the books for rental property alright if you place property in service and a personal activity you can't claim depreciation so if it's personal you can't do the depreciation you don't depreciate your home you might get a benefit from the interest of the property taxes which is strange because it's personal stuff and not business related but that's how it is so that kind of confuses things so however if you change the properties used to business or the production of income you can begin to depreciate it at the time of the change so you place the property in service for business or income producing use on the date of the change so example you put it on the house and use it as your personal home several years before you converted it to the rental property although its specific use was personal and no depreciation was allowable you placed the home in service when you began using it as your home so you began to claim depreciation in the year you converted it to rental property because at that time it's used changed to the production of income so you changed it from the personal to the production of income logistically you have an issue there of what's going to be the basis in the property since I purchased it a while back kind of thing but I will dive into that possibly in future presentations


So, good afternoon everybody. I'm Helen Fox. I'm head of Innovation Strategy at DEFRA. I'm really pleased to be here today listening to all the presentations from so many of you. Struck by the similarities actually between the themes that were emerging from the presentations today and those which we've highlighted through our own programme. So, just turning on to the programme itself, which is called the Innovation in Environmental Monitoring programme. And this is a joint programme. We've been working actually with Simon and Anna, I've been working with them for about a year and a half now, setting up this programme. So, I think first of all I'm going to just give you the context of the wider programme and then I'll talk you through the details of the call itself and then a little bit of detail on the specifics on the scope. So, first of all the programme, DEFRA and UKRI are investing £12 million across three years for research and innovation projects to develop enhanced monitoring capabilities in areas of joint strategic interest. I'll come on to that in a minute. And as you will have heard from today, we need that in all areas of the data life cycle from data collection, processing, analysis and visualisation. And that also includes multiple technology readiness levels, so the technology development stages. So, we've intentionally emphasised the importance of involving the end user in both calls. It's crucial that any development takes place with the needs of the specific user in mind, whether that's private or public sector. We encourage the development of partnerships to make sure that the product or service is something that's been tested in a practical setting. So, the programme itself has two elements. The NERC-led programme, which is supporting research-led activity and an Innovate UK programme, which is to be launched in the winter, which will be supporting business-led activity, although there is some flexibility in terms of partnerships that can be formed. So, this slide covers the programme objectives overall, and I'll just talk you through some of the details which pertain to the NERC-led call, which you'll see when you're looking at the programme objectives, how they all link in. So, really what we encourage and what we want to see is bids that focus on solving the most pressing problems of today and the future. And we want solutions that have a high chance of being commercialised. So, in our call text, which was published two weeks ago now, last week, I think. Two weeks now, isn't it? Twenty-fourth, yep. So, we can make sure that there's a link available for those of you if you haven't seen it already. So, we've mentioned new sensing systems and capabilities. Now, just to emphasise, your product can actually make use of existing technology, provided it's being adapted for a new application or it's being combined with other technologies. And I'm just giving a quick example of the kinds of things that we're talking about when we mean applied within the user context. So, the National Water Quality Instrumentation Service, which is based in the Environment Agency, are trialling a new piece of equipment called a Fluidian Unit, and that measures automatically levels of E. coli in a water body. And what they've done is they've put this technology that they're testing into their existing monitoring systems, which pumps up with the river samples every hour. So, it's all being used in the context of what's there already. So, in the call text, we've produced some desired outcomes, and those are a good checklist of the sorts of things that we want to see. And many of the things that I've been hearing today, analysis-ready data and also sustainability, low energy use is also something in there, and ideally lower cost than existing options, because we've outlined in the call just to give you a sense of the kinds of products and services we want to see. So, this slide highlights that the NERC-led call is primarily a capital funding call. So, that means that we will fund 100% of any equipment costs you have and 80% of full economic costs for other resources. So, that might include the labour costs of developing your innovation. Your project can cost between £450,000 and £750,000, and can last up to 36 months. And finally, so we've specified four challenge areas, and actually, again, they were really reflected by many of the presentations that were given today. So, biodiversity, soil, water quality, and greenhouse gas emissions, and there we've specified emissions from deaf receptors as it is a partnership between deafra and NERC. So, it's landfill, wastewater, and agriculture that are the specific deafra sectors in scope. And it's important to note that you must stay within those areas, and you'll see that they are actually quite broad in themselves. So, there's a fair amount of flexibility within those four challenge areas. Underneath the challenge areas, within the call text I mentioned earlier, we've specified some areas of interest. And these are a summary of deafra's monitoring priorities that we developed by consulting deafra group and deafra policy teams and evidence teams. And those also correspond with NERC's priorities as well. So, we hope to see a good number of bids within those areas. However, while those areas are there to help you target your proposals, you can put forward bids outside of those areas. So, as long as the proposal fits under one or more of the challenge areas, it'll be considered. Just make sure that you include a strong rationale and strong evidence that it will meet an end-user need. So, we're giving this flexibility to avoid blocking valuable ideas outside of those listed. And marine projects aren't in scope. We feel they're sufficiently covered by other programmes already in train. So, in summary, we have designed a programme which covers multiple technology development stages, and it encourages a multidisciplinary approach. And the first call is open now, and there's a second to come this winter. We hope that the programme will help to build a community of expertise and a pipeline of UK capabilities to bring the best of the UK's expertise to bear on environmental monitoring innovation. Thank you. Thank you very much, Helen.