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My spouse did business at a collector show in Illinois years ago. We filed some sales tax thing, as we collected sales tax (as we were told to do) and remitted

My spouse did business at a collector show in Illinois years ago. We filed some sales tax thing, as we collected sales tax (as we were told to do) and remitted it. Did that for... 2 years, IIRC, then didn't do that show again. We got letters threatening that we would be penalized if we didn't fill out the form and remit our collected tax. There was no option to say 'nothing'. I mean... we did one year - put 0. Then we stopped the business. Had multiple emails, physical letters, and hours on the phone being bounced around between places to say "we don't run the business any more - we're not operating". And... no one seemed to have a way to decidedly stop these. We'd get "OK" then... 6 months later got a letter saying "you owe $x and penalties for failing to file"... I was slightly concerned about driving through Illinois at some point, thinking they might have an arrest warrant out for one of us. It took 2 years of not getting these to finally believe we're not in their system any more. Similar story for New Jersey, but it wasn't quite as bad. Still required a lot of manual work.

elAhmo 4mo ago
You can't just start collecting sales tax before registering with the state, and likewise to stop collecting you need to deregister. It is a fairly standard procedures every accountant is aware of.
- lowercased 4mo ago
  Sure you can. It's what we as vendors were told to do by the show organizers. They told us the rates to collect and gave us info as to how/where to remit the money. States absolutely would take the money.
hilariously 4mo ago
Huh, in my state the secretary of state is where you register a business, and you just go to the website and click "this is no longer operating" and then they stop sending you letters to file your 0 taxes.
- amluto 4mo ago
  You’re making a fascinating assumption that the tax authorities’ systems are at all integrated with the Secretary of State systems.
  - hilariously 4mo ago
    You'd only think that if you misunderstood "in my state" to mean "in all states"
- SoftTalker 4mo ago
  Same.
cucumber3732842 4mo ago
Why would they ever fix the system. Some number of people will just pay it and those people are pure profit. Heck, fixing the system costs money. It's the same evil math behind every other billing scam that sails under the flag of ignorance. Speaking of ignorance, to all those people saying you forgot to fill out a form, there are several states that are known to be maliciously sloppy about this sort of thing. You file a form and they silently reject it or billing you anyway on some questionable pretext because they can. NY is one of them. Doesn't surprise me that IL is too since both states are kinda cash strapped.
- vharuck 4mo ago
  >Why would they ever fix the system. Some number of people will just pay it and those people are pure profit. Heck, fixing the system costs money. The system is run by employees of whatever agency handles taxes. Neither the employees nor the agency keep a portion of the taxes. If they do not have the money or will to fix it, people are supposed to pressure their representatives to give them the money and mandate. If this truly came down to an intent to squeeze more money out of people than they owed, that would almost always come from the law's wording. Again, pressure the representatives. The only times an agency would squeeze money is when it's funded in large part by fines or fees, or if an employee is committing fraud and pocketing some of the money.
  - gottorf 4mo ago
    > pressure the representatives In the GP's case, it sounds like they were on a road show, and they do not live in Illinois at all. Of course, that doesn't prevent them from contacting a IL state representative for redress, but it is an edge case of sorts.
    - lowercased 4mo ago
      Correct. We were in Michigan, then later North Carolina. We did collector shows in a few states. The organizers told us to collect the tax and gave us vendors information on how to remit to the state agency. We didn't do it at first, then later, as more money came in, we did it for a few years in one state, then another, trying to be 'good' about the whole thing. Was a massive headache. What would have made so much more sense is for a state agent to have someone come on site to trade shows like this to make it easy/simple to fill in the proper forms, take money, and increase state inflow. Two people working for a couple days would be a few hundred dollars(?). At a tradeshow with 200 vendors, most doing thousands and some tens of thousands in sales... it would be relatively easy money. That obviously becomes intrusive to some folks, but... would have helped those states and made things easier on us.
calvinmorrison 4mo ago
Thats OK my county keeps threatening to pickup my dog if i dont get a new license. Maybe they have a special kennel for Urns?
- throw1234567891 4mo ago
  They’ll just euthanise him. Better pay the license.
  - x______________ 4mo ago
    >Maybe they have a special kennel for Urns? Unless a new breed has been named, or an /s was missing, I'm not sure they will be very successful in their recovery attempts.
- llbbdd 4mo ago
  I was going to comment "dog license???" but I looked it up for my county and I had no idea this was a thing. I'm in awe. I adopted an adult dog ~9 years ago. He has issued literally one single bark in that span. He stays indoors or in my fenced-in yard 100% of the time because of some health issues. I'm supposed to pay an annual fee for this or they'll fine me?? Nobody ever told me this, not the shelter, not the vet he goes to regularly who presumably has the ability to check this. There are also apparently canvassers paid by the county who go door to door checking for this?! I'm not the kind of person to typically nitpick about where my taxes are going, but...I retroactively and broadly apologize for every lighthearted jab I may have ever made about TV licensing in the UK. This is beyond dumb in comparison. And my condolences, the fact that this system leads to them harassing you in this way is completely insane.
  - dashundchen 4mo ago
    Why is dog licensing that crazy? You are required to license and register a car that's used in public. Your dog may always be on your property but for almost every other dog that is not that case. A dog can be a public health threat, in both terms of disease and attacks on people or other dogs. Many states require rabies vaccinations for example .The owners are ultimately liable for that and there should be a way to track that. Plus the fees frequently fund animal control and shelters in many areas.
throwaway894345 4mo ago
Illinois online forms are egregiously bad. A couple examples off the top of my head: I was traveling through the state and got on a toll road by accident without cash to pay the tolls, the toll booth employee said I could just pay online, pointing to a sign that said "missed a toll? pay online at <url>", so we continued our trip intending to pay the tolls online. At the end of the trip, I logged on to pay our tolls--the application insisted that we enter the specific toll IDs of each toll that we missed, even though we didn't know we were supposed to be recording any toll IDs. If you didn't know the toll IDs, you could use a map application to look up the toll IDs, but the map application would crash within a second of opening it and even if you managed to get a screenshot the resolution was so low that the text was indecipherable. When I called the support number, they told me that I would be fined triple the cost of the tolls if I didn't pay within a week, but I would be able to pay without knowing the specific toll IDs that I missed. When I asked the agent to tell me what tolls I missed (clearly they knew if they were going to fine me), they told me they couldn't tell me for another week. I pointed out that this would be after the toll deadline and they relentlessly tried to avoid acknowledging that simple fact. Eventually I sent them my best guess about what I owed with a letter stating what I had attempted and that I would contact a lawyer about any fines and never heard from them again. Some years later, after moving to Chicago, I had to file state taxes for the first time. The state issued me a driver's license with a 12 digit number, but the state tax form only allowed me to authenticate with an 8 digit Illinois driver's license number (the other acceptable forms of identification didn't apply to me for reasons I no longer remember).
- SoftTalker 4mo ago
  Illinois is one of the most administratively fucked up and corrupt states in the country. Four of the last ten governors have been so bad they actually served prison time and the current governor appears to be cut from the same cloth. https://www.illinoispolicy.org/4-of-illinois-past-10-governors-went-to-prison/ https://www.illinoispolicy.org/4-of-illinois-past-10-governo...
  - throwaway894345 4mo ago
    Illinois has a history of corruption for sure, but illinoispolicy.org is right-wing propaganda. Also, it’s corrupt and bureaucratic for a purple state but it’s still much better than the median red state (my native Iowa went from purple to solid red a decade ago, and we nosedived on everything from education to economy to deficit spending to public health to corruption).
pnw 4mo ago
2 years? California chased one guy for taxes for 3 decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franchise_Tax_Board_of_California_v._Hyatt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franchise_Tax_Board_of_Califor...
jonathanlydall 4mo ago
In South Africa we have a TV license which any shop selling TV’s is required by law to report the buyer’s TV license number for any purchase. The idea is that it funds public broadcasting and productions thereof, but like a lot of SOEs here, there is loads of corruption and inefficiencies, I only use my TV for streaming of content which is not produced locally, so I resent having to pay it each year. However, it’s apparently a mission to get off it, even if you sell your TV you’re most certainly going to be harassed for years by debt collectors and what not. Unlike your case though (where I expect the fine is not nothing), it’s only like R250/y (like 13USD) and they’ve smartly (which is surprising for an otherwise largely incompetent org), made it easy to pay. I get an SMS reminder and can have paid it by credit card within 2 minutes. So I’ll probably not bother trying to get off it as it’s so much more effort and a pretty small amount of money and hassle.
- beAbU 4mo ago
  Heh, took me about a year after moving from SA to Ireland to get them to leave me alone about my tv license. Here they have a tv license as well, but so far I've sidestepped it because I shipped my TV over, but one day I'll probably need to pay for one again. Only problem is now its something like 250 euro, not Ront, so it's a lot more pricey!
  - jonathanlydall 4mo ago
    I'd rather pay EUR 250 a year when I know the money is used for genuine public benefit rather than ZAR 250 a year where it's mostly enriching people who don't do anything of real value.

elAhmo 4mo ago

You can't just start collecting sales tax before registering with the state, and likewise to stop collecting you need to deregister. It is a fairly standard procedures every accountant is aware of.

lowercased 4mo ago
Sure you can. It's what we as vendors were told to do by the show organizers. They told us the rates to collect and gave us info as to how/where to remit the money. States absolutely would take the money.

hilariously 4mo ago

Huh, in my state the secretary of state is where you register a business, and you just go to the website and click "this is no longer operating" and then they stop sending you letters to file your 0 taxes.

amluto 4mo ago
You’re making a fascinating assumption that the tax authorities’ systems are at all integrated with the Secretary of State systems.
- hilariously 4mo ago
  You'd only think that if you misunderstood "in my state" to mean "in all states"
SoftTalker 4mo ago
Same.

cucumber3732842 4mo ago

Why would they ever fix the system. Some number of people will just pay it and those people are pure profit. Heck, fixing the system costs money. It's the same evil math behind every other billing scam that sails under the flag of ignorance. Speaking of ignorance, to all those people saying you forgot to fill out a form, there are several states that are known to be maliciously sloppy about this sort of thing. You file a form and they silently reject it or billing you anyway on some questionable pretext because they can. NY is one of them. Doesn't surprise me that IL is too since both states are kinda cash strapped.

vharuck 4mo ago
>Why would they ever fix the system. Some number of people will just pay it and those people are pure profit. Heck, fixing the system costs money. The system is run by employees of whatever agency handles taxes. Neither the employees nor the agency keep a portion of the taxes. If they do not have the money or will to fix it, people are supposed to pressure their representatives to give them the money and mandate. If this truly came down to an intent to squeeze more money out of people than they owed, that would almost always come from the law's wording. Again, pressure the representatives. The only times an agency would squeeze money is when it's funded in large part by fines or fees, or if an employee is committing fraud and pocketing some of the money.
- gottorf 4mo ago
  > pressure the representatives In the GP's case, it sounds like they were on a road show, and they do not live in Illinois at all. Of course, that doesn't prevent them from contacting a IL state representative for redress, but it is an edge case of sorts.
  - lowercased 4mo ago
    Correct. We were in Michigan, then later North Carolina. We did collector shows in a few states. The organizers told us to collect the tax and gave us vendors information on how to remit to the state agency. We didn't do it at first, then later, as more money came in, we did it for a few years in one state, then another, trying to be 'good' about the whole thing. Was a massive headache. What would have made so much more sense is for a state agent to have someone come on site to trade shows like this to make it easy/simple to fill in the proper forms, take money, and increase state inflow. Two people working for a couple days would be a few hundred dollars(?). At a tradeshow with 200 vendors, most doing thousands and some tens of thousands in sales... it would be relatively easy money. That obviously becomes intrusive to some folks, but... would have helped those states and made things easier on us.

calvinmorrison 4mo ago

Thats OK my county keeps threatening to pickup my dog if i dont get a new license. Maybe they have a special kennel for Urns?

throw1234567891 4mo ago
They’ll just euthanise him. Better pay the license.
- x______________ 4mo ago
  >Maybe they have a special kennel for Urns? Unless a new breed has been named, or an /s was missing, I'm not sure they will be very successful in their recovery attempts.
llbbdd 4mo ago
I was going to comment "dog license???" but I looked it up for my county and I had no idea this was a thing. I'm in awe. I adopted an adult dog ~9 years ago. He has issued literally one single bark in that span. He stays indoors or in my fenced-in yard 100% of the time because of some health issues. I'm supposed to pay an annual fee for this or they'll fine me?? Nobody ever told me this, not the shelter, not the vet he goes to regularly who presumably has the ability to check this. There are also apparently canvassers paid by the county who go door to door checking for this?! I'm not the kind of person to typically nitpick about where my taxes are going, but...I retroactively and broadly apologize for every lighthearted jab I may have ever made about TV licensing in the UK. This is beyond dumb in comparison. And my condolences, the fact that this system leads to them harassing you in this way is completely insane.
- dashundchen 4mo ago
  Why is dog licensing that crazy? You are required to license and register a car that's used in public. Your dog may always be on your property but for almost every other dog that is not that case. A dog can be a public health threat, in both terms of disease and attacks on people or other dogs. Many states require rabies vaccinations for example .The owners are ultimately liable for that and there should be a way to track that. Plus the fees frequently fund animal control and shelters in many areas.

throwaway894345 4mo ago

Illinois online forms are egregiously bad. A couple examples off the top of my head: I was traveling through the state and got on a toll road by accident without cash to pay the tolls, the toll booth employee said I could just pay online, pointing to a sign that said "missed a toll? pay online at <url>", so we continued our trip intending to pay the tolls online. At the end of the trip, I logged on to pay our tolls--the application insisted that we enter the specific toll IDs of each toll that we missed, even though we didn't know we were supposed to be recording any toll IDs. If you didn't know the toll IDs, you could use a map application to look up the toll IDs, but the map application would crash within a second of opening it and even if you managed to get a screenshot the resolution was so low that the text was indecipherable. When I called the support number, they told me that I would be fined triple the cost of the tolls if I didn't pay within a week, but I would be able to pay without knowing the specific toll IDs that I missed. When I asked the agent to tell me what tolls I missed (clearly they knew if they were going to fine me), they told me they couldn't tell me for another week. I pointed out that this would be after the toll deadline and they relentlessly tried to avoid acknowledging that simple fact. Eventually I sent them my best guess about what I owed with a letter stating what I had attempted and that I would contact a lawyer about any fines and never heard from them again. Some years later, after moving to Chicago, I had to file state taxes for the first time. The state issued me a driver's license with a 12 digit number, but the state tax form only allowed me to authenticate with an 8 digit Illinois driver's license number (the other acceptable forms of identification didn't apply to me for reasons I no longer remember).

SoftTalker 4mo ago
Illinois is one of the most administratively fucked up and corrupt states in the country. Four of the last ten governors have been so bad they actually served prison time and the current governor appears to be cut from the same cloth. https://www.illinoispolicy.org/4-of-illinois-past-10-governors-went-to-prison/ https://www.illinoispolicy.org/4-of-illinois-past-10-governo...
- throwaway894345 4mo ago
  Illinois has a history of corruption for sure, but illinoispolicy.org is right-wing propaganda. Also, it’s corrupt and bureaucratic for a purple state but it’s still much better than the median red state (my native Iowa went from purple to solid red a decade ago, and we nosedived on everything from education to economy to deficit spending to public health to corruption).

pnw 4mo ago

2 years? California chased one guy for taxes for 3 decades. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franchise_Tax_Board_of_California_v._Hyatt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franchise_Tax_Board_of_Califor...

jonathanlydall 4mo ago

In South Africa we have a TV license which any shop selling TV’s is required by law to report the buyer’s TV license number for any purchase. The idea is that it funds public broadcasting and productions thereof, but like a lot of SOEs here, there is loads of corruption and inefficiencies, I only use my TV for streaming of content which is not produced locally, so I resent having to pay it each year. However, it’s apparently a mission to get off it, even if you sell your TV you’re most certainly going to be harassed for years by debt collectors and what not. Unlike your case though (where I expect the fine is not nothing), it’s only like R250/y (like 13USD) and they’ve smartly (which is surprising for an otherwise largely incompetent org), made it easy to pay. I get an SMS reminder and can have paid it by credit card within 2 minutes. So I’ll probably not bother trying to get off it as it’s so much more effort and a pretty small amount of money and hassle.

beAbU 4mo ago
Heh, took me about a year after moving from SA to Ireland to get them to leave me alone about my tv license. Here they have a tv license as well, but so far I've sidestepped it because I shipped my TV over, but one day I'll probably need to pay for one again. Only problem is now its something like 250 euro, not Ront, so it's a lot more pricey!
- jonathanlydall 4mo ago
  I'd rather pay EUR 250 a year when I know the money is used for genuine public benefit rather than ZAR 250 a year where it's mostly enriching people who don't do anything of real value.