>>I must say, Ron, that these two sentences make retirement look good. >> >>If you just click your heels three more times, will you find >>yourself outside Kansas? >> >>Susan > > >Possibly. There has to be intelligent life somewhere in the universe. > >Ron N > Mr Ron and Ms Susan, not here in Louisiana. I just completed a Kafka-esque sales tax audit on my very tiny business ( me and my wife) that took three weeks and examined all my sales for a one year period to determine if I was extracting my fair share of the annual extortion of working people (9%). The odd thing is that tuning (a service) is exempt by statute, but the moment you repair anything the total invoice (including any tuning) becomes taxable. This leads to debate over whether regulation and voicing can be considered repair or service work. Clearly, all rebuilding and major jobs from new hammers to balancing an action have been taxed but all the little things like replacing one treble wire (which I will do for a regular customer at no charge) now mean I owe a large bill, mainly because I kept accurate records. Lesson: it's all tuning. Dont write anything down beyond that. The corolary: you are never too small to get whacked by a state government that cant figure out how it's going broke, that has no property tax or income tax to speak of, cant come by it's money honestly, upfront, but has to force the small business people to do its dirty work for it, and penalizes the poor folks who pay an incredible percentage of income in sales tax on food, medicine, school supplies, clothes, piano work while the oil company executives avoid it all by having major items purchased out of state and shipped in. Sorry for the rant, but it is very fresh in my mind..... -- ----Dave ----------------------------- Dave Doremus RPT New Orleans algiers_piano@bellsouth.net ------------------------------
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