Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s…

This is perhaps the most painful and embarrassing admission I have yet rendered for Monday’s cavalcade of personal failures and mistakes, but here goes.

At first, I did everything right. I got my EIN and paid all the fees for my business license and the filing of my articles of incorporation. I gathered all the paperwork and filed with the state and the federal government for my income taxes right on time.

Somehow, however, I failed to pay my sales tax. Yes, my sales tax, that most ubiquitous and insistent of taxes, dealt with every day by retailers throughout the United States.

We opened our doors in October of 2001 (yes, right after 9-11, but that is another horror story). For some reason that I cannot begin to explain now, come January 2002, I had not yet paid one penny of my store’s collected sales tax. (I do not know if this is true in all states, but in New Mexico, sales taxes are supposed to be filed monthly for retail storefronts.)

One afternoon, the phone rang. On the other end of the line was a professionally polite, quite-voiced gentleman from the state tax board. My heart could not have beat faster if the man had been Charles Manson himself.

Fortunately, my aforementioned cracker-jack accountant made a couple phone calls and it was agreed that I would suffer no penalties so long as I paid the amount in full…immediately.

I can offer no explanations as to why, I, the partner solely responsible for our business’s books and tax filings, failed to so much as think about paying our sales tax. I do know that many a store has been shut down by their state tax board for lesser offences. I got lucky.

Today’s Lesson: Pay your Tax’s kids. The government feels no obligation to remind you until it far too late.

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