“this practice is quite common among restaurant owners. Cash flow is a huge problem so putting off payment of payroll taxes until the next quarter is a huge temptation.”
I have worked with probably a thousand business owners over the the past 40 years. Very common not just with restaurants though. They get behind on taxes and it snowballs and after a few quarter doing it they cannot ever pay it back.
This and female employee embezzelers which is also very common.
I know of 4 business that just fired the female employee. They were too embarrased to report it to the police from the lack of watching the books. The ingenous ways women covered up their tracks should be taught in business classes.
One woman would write a check out to herself, photocopy it, cash it, then when the bank statement came in she would white out her name and put in the name of a vender. It was alwways for an off amount 389.89 or such and never just 400.00 which would be suspicious.
Then she would shrink it down and place it over the original bank statement check and photocopy it and repunch new holes in the new statment.
The owner caught it because he noticed the staments from the bank were star shaped and hers were round. She got him for 30,000 over 5-6 years or so.
“The owner caught it because he noticed the staments from the bank were star shaped and hers were round.”
Fixed it:
The owner caught it because he noticed the staments from the bank had star shaped holes and hers were round.
“This and female employee embezzelers which is also very common.”
This and the use of corporate credit or debit (”purchasing or p-) cards for personal expenditures. The local university finally cancelled all of the existing p-cards because of rampant fraud. Even one of the (female) vice-presidents was fired and prosecuted for this.
You are right . . . and 96% of the time (give or take), the embezzlers ARE women. Men can be conned so easily by feminine sweetness, it is uncanny.
The embezzlers may go for years (and, occassionally, even a lifetime) without getting caught if they don't get too greedy.
From my years of experience, it is random events such as the one you mentioned that flags the most careful ones. More often, it is just that they keep getting bolder and more greedy.
Not so different that the election stealing liberals. Just look at how they dominate the positions of bureaucracy, academia, media and law where you don't actually have to do anything or produce results. Then they eventually get bold and greedy and want everything. Just skimming a little here and there will no longer do.
I was dumbfounded that our county just elected a Republican Coroner on Tuesday with zero medical training. I actually voted for the Democrat because he was a decent guy.
But that's what happens when you have a D after your name in most of Westmoreland County, Pennsylvania-- a blue collar county which was once so Democrat that Mondale actually carried it in Reagan's 49 state re-election landslide in 1984.