3457 NY Sales Tax!!!!!!!

Sunday, February 5, 2012

What is hateful to you do not do to others.
That is the entire law. All the rest is commentary.
-- Rabbi Hillel the Elder (paraphrased) --

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Friday I was very proud of myself. I located online and filled out the four-page form for the final tax filing for my NY DBA, indicating that I was killing it, enclosed my original tax authority certificate, and mailed it to Albany. I made 2 copies of the tax forms and the certificate - one for my files and one for my accountant. And I did it all two weeks before required. Yea me!

Yesterday morning I walked along the waterfront with a Meetup group (8 other adults, a child, and a basset hound), and had lunch with a smaller group in a tiny diner in town.

When I got home, I got out some 8.5 x 11 photo paper and made copies of a few hundred photos for Daughter. Actually, I'm giving her the originals, I made the copies for me. It took all afternoon, into evening, to do it all.

The very first set came out oddly. I had arranged six snapshots on the scanner screen, put photo paper in the hopper, and pressed "copy" - and was amazed that the photos came out with ... text ... NYS tax form text ... in the spaces ... between the photos .... Ack!

I had left the last page of the tax form in the copier! That's the page with my signature, and email address, and phone number! I sent off an incomplete form! Ack!

I can't simply make another copy, include the original final page, and send it again, because the certificate went in the original package! If this were a reasonable business, you'd think that would be ok, that they could put together the parts from two different mailings.

But this is NOT a reasonable business. This is the New York State tax machine. It's an impenetrable bureaucracy - so impenetrable that when you call the phone number, you get a tape that tells you to go to the website. Period.

Of course, this situation won't be on the website.

I have no other option but to do just what I can't - to write a cover letter, attach the full tax form and a copy of the certificate, send it by overnight mail so it will arrive about the same time as the other - and hope that with the literally tens of thousands (maybe hundreds of thousands) of forms they'll be receiving, someone will be smart enough to put the two halves together.

(Um, it has been my experience that they don't read explanatory letters. I don't have much hope. And given that there is a hefty fine for being late, and a hefty cost to replace a "lost" cretificate, there's not exactly any incentive for them to make it easy.)

I am crushed.
.

3439 Duh....

Friday, January 6, 2012

Another happy ending….

-------------------------------------------------------

It's Friday. Another week during which I made absolutely no progress on anything.

Well, I did find the forms online to kill my NY "business". I never bought anything using the tax id and I never sold anything, but I still had to file tax forms for it, so I figure I may as well kill it. All the forms I could find online to kill a DBA were dated for 2011, though. I hope there are no major changes in the forms for 2012.

I couldn't actually print them because my printer has a problem.

It worked fine for a few weeks after I bought it, then it quit printing things in real time. The error message says it's offline. But it would, however, print everything on the queue when I IPLed. As soon as Windows was full up, it was offline again. About two weeks ago it stopped even that.

It will scan documents and print them - so essentially I have a copier. It has never, since I first installed it, been willing to send scanned stuff to the computer.

I figured I should uninstall and reinstall it, but I can't find the disk or booklet that came with it. I swear they were on top of the desk overhead, but they're not there now.

So I sent links to the tax forms to Daughter to print for me, but she is extremely relaxed about stuff like that. Oh, well, I have until March.

It just seems like everything these days is either going wrong, or is harder than it should be. I want to hide in my bed. Yesterday I didn't get dressed at all.

--------------------------------

I have done nothing with the Meetup dinner group, either, since that dinner last summer when nine people signed up, and then one by one they cancelled out until the afternoon of the dinner I was the only one left.

It was up for renewal this month, and I didn't want to pay for renewal if I wasn't going to do anything, so I'm trying something. I asked the members for volunteers as event coordinators. Four women volunteered. I sent them an email asking that they please, when they schedule a dinner, keep to my vision for the group:
- Local to this area (I specified "south of"/"north of" boundaries)
- Limit to six or eight at table
- Make sure ALL information is in the original announcement so there won't be update after update, change after change.

Yeah. Sure. I keep forgetting that people are crazy. One of the women has scheduled a dinner for the end of January. No attendance limit, and she's changed the time already. She wants reservations in a whole week before so she can "make arrangements with the restaurant". I guess she's unaware that people wait until the last minute to drop out. It's terrible of me, but I almost hope she learns from this....
.