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Speaking as a small business owner, (3 people) I'd prefer a higher tax with less complexity over a lower tax rate with more complexity. Yeah, I have an accoun
by lsc 17y ago
Speaking as a small business owner, (3 people) I'd prefer a higher tax with less complexity over a lower tax rate with more complexity.
Yeah, I have an accountant who handles all that stuff for me. (Now, I should have a lawyer, but right now I honestly dont even know enough to know /when/ I should ask the lawyer, so I mostly rely on the fact that it's not worth suing a company with my revenue.)
The problem is that when I have a new business idea, there are a myriad ways that intersects with tax law. I run all new business ideas past my accountant right now, because I'm wholly unqualified to understand that intersection.
To give you an example, for most larger customers, it would make a lot of sense (well, they would pay less) if they bought hardware and I hosted it for them; the thing is, I can obtain high-ram hardware much cheaper than my customers can, and obviously, if it's exactly the same as all the other hardware I have I will be better equipped to manage it, as I have spare parts and experience with any problems the gear may have. So, the obvious idea is for me to sell the hardware to my customers, then charge them for manging said hardware. But apparently there are some complexities with sales tax (right now, I buy all my server parts retail... apparently there is some accounting complexity in then making sure that I keep track of drive with serial number X and how much I paid for it, then it went in server Y I sold for Z dollars.) Right now, I don't need to screw with sales tax; I just keep track of all the server parts I buy.
Just doing that accounting easily doubles the work required to assemble a server. (server assembly isn't exactly /rocket science/ keep your ground strap on and you'll be fine.) So, I continue to rent servers rather than selling them, providing less value than I would have to the larger customers.
- timr 17y agoSales taxes are administered by the states. They have nothing to do with federal tax policy.