alt Hacker NewsMy spouse did business at a collector show in Illinois years ago. We filed some sales tax thing, as we collected sales tax (as we were told to do) and remitted it. Did that for... 2 years, IIRC, then didn't do that show again. We got letters threatening that we would be penalized if we didn't fill out the form and remit our collected tax. There was no option to say 'nothing'. I mean... we did one year - put 0. Then we stopped the business. Had multiple emails, physical letters, and hours on the phone being bounced around between places to say "we don't run the business any more - we're not operating". And... no one seemed to have a way to decidedly stop these. We'd get "OK" then... 6 months later got a letter saying "you owe $x and penalties for failing to file"... I was slightly concerned about driving through Illinois at some point, thinking they might have an arrest warrant out for one of us. It took 2 years of not getting these to finally believe we're not in their system any more. Similar story for New Jersey, but it wasn't quite as bad. Still required a lot of manual work.
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Thats OK my county keeps threatening to pickup my dog if i dont get a new license. Maybe they have a special kennel for Urns?
Why would they ever fix the system. Some number of people will just pay it and those people are pure profit. Heck, fixing the system costs money.
It's the same evil math behind every other billing scam that sails under the flag of ignorance.
Speaking of ignorance, to all those people saying you forgot to fill out a form, there are several states that are known to be maliciously sloppy about this sort of thing. You file a form and they silently reject it or billing you anyway on some questionable pretext because they can. NY is one of them. Doesn't surprise me that IL is too since both states are kinda cash strapped.
You can't just start collecting sales tax before registering with the state, and likewise to stop collecting you need to deregister. It is a fairly standard procedures every accountant is aware of.
Huh, in my state the secretary of state is where you register a business, and you just go to the website and click "this is no longer operating" and then they stop sending you letters to file your 0 taxes.