Taxes, Taxes, Taxes

Sales Tax & Biodiesel Businesses
Here in the Great State of Utah any registered business that collects money has the fun chore of collecting State Sales Tax (oh happy, happy, joy, joy!)

Even I, an online retailer, am not out of the States "all watchful eye" when it comes to taxes, however, there are some perks to being online!


Utah Sales
As far as Utah is concerned, any purchase that occurs on my website that has an address outside the state of Utah is exempt from having to pay Sales Tax (lucky non-utah citizens that they are, eh?).

Unfortunately, if you have a Utah address and you purchase on my site, I get the fun task of collecting 6.5% of your purchase in sales tax. Then I get the fun task each quarter of reporting my sales tax to the state and paying the sales tax bill.

Today is such that day.
Taxes for the first quarter of 2006 are due tomorrow and, like a lot of tax stuff in utah, they've made it ever so easy to pay your sales tax online here (they obviously know where to spend my hard-earned tax dollars first, eh? Making it easy for me to pay MORE of my hard-earned tax dollars to PAY THEM!)

So, I get to calculate how many folks from Utah have bought stuff, figure up total sales, tell the state how much I've sold (which I'm not real keen on, but what can ya do? They've got the power to shut me down), and pay my bill.

Interestingly enough, Utah really doesn't make up very much of my sales. In fact, it's less than 2% of my total sales (wierd, I know, but that's the power of the internet!). Here in Utah, while biodiesel is kind of going along, we've had our share of legislative BS get in the way of making biodiesel.

Permits are now required to collect oil and the health department get's to say whether or not you can even make the stuff in your garage (gotta love beauracracy, eh?)

So, while biodiesel is big here, those truly brewing aren't really doing a whole lot here these days out of fear of the Health Department and also because folks just don't want to hassle w/ the tax man and the permits. (Damn renderers!--they've made it their job to turn any would be biodieseler into the Health Dept as quick as they discover them).

But, back to taxes....

So, our lovely state get's their fair share of my Utah sales (which again, ain't much), and I'm left to do the books & tell them how much I've made each quarter.

I just hope to high heaven that they never get around to taxing internet sales. While there's a heck of a lot of us out there with websites doing online sales & doing well, I'd really hate to see the feds or the states tax those sales.

Enter the NFIB!
The National Federation of Independent Business Association.

There's a guy in my neighborhood that works for these folks. Kind of a cool organization! They lobby for the interests of small businesses everywhere at a congressional level to keep legislation friendly to small businesses.

Here's hoping they do their job when it comes to taxing internet sales & keeping as far the hell away from me as possible!

If you're a small business owner (or know someone who is), these guy's are the good guys. Send them their way. They'll take good care of you!

So, that's my brief but fun-filled post for today.

Off to pay my taxes!
Graydon
The Rabid Biodiesel Nut