The funny thing about running a business today is that you can feel pretty invincible. After all, you can ask Google any question you have on any topic. If you don’t feel like consulting Google, you can pop into your favorite Facebook group and post your question and sit back and wait for the answers to appear. Perhaps you thought you knew the answer to your question but wanted confirmation.
The problem is that it’s easy to pick the answer from Google that you want. The Facebook group that chimes in to answer your question is a group of like-minded people just like you.
Except for the answer you chose from Google didn’t really apply to your situation and the like-minded people in your Facebook group might not challenge you on your B.S.
I recently had conversations with business owners about the U.S. Supreme Court ruling on sales tax. They read articles online, including conversations in a Facebook group, then registered with about 14 states to collect sales tax. It turned out their business did not meet the requirement to register in most of those states. The critical piece of information most business owners don’t get about sales tax is that you don’t register to “just” collect sales tax. You now have income tax obligations. Perhaps business privilege taxes. Even if you have no income in those states, there’s a minimum tax due. The cost to a business to just do things like this is huge regardless of the size of your business. That dollar amount that just popped into your head after reading that last sentence? Add at least 2 zeros to it. You have to account for the tax and the time and fees to files the returns.
