I just got a bill from my state government wanting me to pay sales tax (estimated) for the two years after I had shut the business down.
They want sales tax on transactions that never happened.
Now I can deal with my state government but can you imagine getting that kind of bill from say, New York?
This is the kind of thing that will drive mom and pops out of business. We can not hope to comply. We can not afford to argue when they make a mistake. And the big boys will be laughing all the way to the bank.
“Now I can deal with my state government but can you imagine getting that kind of bill from say, New York?”
Oh, I can absolutely imagine it. I lived it. We shut down a business in Tulare county California. Then a few years later we moved to Tennessee. They hunted us down, insisting that we pay personal property taxes for those years the business was shut down on the business equipment that we no longer had.
Calling them was futile, since the idiot on the phone could barely speak English. Finally got a manager to call back and she said I needed to prove that the business was closed. Apparently their form that I sent them where I checked that the business was closed was not good enough.
They wanted federal tax returns for all the years that the business was closed. I contended that I would give them schedule A and schedule C but the rest of it was none of their business. At this point I was just being obnoxious because I couldn’t stand the Nazi tactics they were using. I thought about sending them complete tax returns, including all the H&R Block worksheets. It would’ve been thousands of pages :-) but about that time they relented that what I had sent them was good enough.
I’m so glad I left that commie state. But even leaving doesn’t stop them from trying to go after you. And liberals think we need more government!