I run a small business, and anyone out there who does will know what a task and cost it is to collect these taxes, keep all of your "papers" in order and deal with the government. If everything is not squared away you incur penalties.
Florida is real cute. I was a few days late this quarter so the other day I get a PHONE CALL from the tax collector. Gee what neat new tactic, just like the the good old days when the Monarch sent the tax collector out, except now we have phones.
At first I thought it was one of my associates playing a joke, because they're in the process of dragging his dick around in the dirt for the same thing. Nope, it was a real-life schmuck tax collector calling my house.
Question: Why in the hell should I have to be their damn tax collector? I have to do their dirty work and not get compensated? I thank the lord that my wife is a CPA or I honestly don't know what I would do. I don't know how guys that don't have an accountant in the family ever get started for cryin' out loud.
With small business owners, there's just not enough of us to get together to change anything so we just have to sit back and take it. I can't even believe I'm still surviving after all of the s**t I've had to go through just dealing with the government.
Don't wanna sound like I'm whining, but the government has honestly been my biggest obstcacle to my business thriving and bringing my customers a good value.
I don't want to sound like "I'm" whining either, but can you imagine how the cigarette taxes have hurt people? And the Boards of Health going into a business and FORCING THEM TO GO SMOKE FREE?
When a person puts his blood, sweat, tears and money into his own business, that's what it should remain: his own.
ahhh, but florida DOES compensate you for collecting sales taxes - the grand whopping sum of 2.5% of the amount of the net tax due
but, they wouldn't want those greedy businesses getting rich collecting the gubmint's pound of flesh, so it's limited to 30 bucks per return, which could be 1, 2, 4 or 12 per year, just think, as much as $360 per year for frequent filers!
of course, if you're even one day late filing a return, ooops, sorry, no collection allowance for you, an extra-specially nice back-door penalty on top of the minimum 10% late-filing penalty
i'm not a cpa, and i don't play one on tv, but i do keep the books for someone who has sold about 300k of stuff on ebay and yahoo
very little is delivered (and thus taxable) in florida, but, once a day i spend about 60 seconds plugging her revenue and expenses into my spreadsheet, and, the day after each quarter ends, the florida sales tax return entries can be transferred to paper and dumped in the mail
but, alas, because the tax she pays on her purchases for resale from outfits which won't do non-taxable sales (by law, they don't have to if they don't want to, whether due to laziness, cashier stupidity, or whatever) reduce the net tax due, she winds up with little or no collection allowance
every time i calculate 2.5% of nothing, i think again of how considerate florida was, in their infinite wisdom, to base their gigantic tax collection allowance on net tax due, instead of tax collected
i gleefully rub my hands as i assume about 24 hours of effort (one minute per day) over the last 4 years to obtain collection allowances totalling $8.83, and calculate that the compensation was the princely sum of about 37 cents per hour
no, wait, that doesn't count the endless pleasurable hours explaining to morons that the "internet tax moratorium" doesn't mean that they don't have to pay the tax, or make any allowance for all of the considerate people who "forget" to pay it, leaving her to eat the minor amount because it's not worth the trouble
why, taking all of those extra benefits into account, nobody can say florida doesn't pay us a veritable king's ransom to do their dirty work for them
surely the exalted and grossly over-compensated position of "private tax collector for the welfare state" must be in heavy demand, and we should just shut up and stop whining lest they take our sinecures away