08:22 – I just filed my North Carolina E-500 Sales Tax report. As always, I deeply resent being forced to function as an unpaid tax collector for the state of North Carolina. North Carolina already has self-reporting of use tax for out-of-state purchases. Why can’t it do the same for sales tax on in-state purchases? This shouldn’t be my problem.
I’m still going through the book session by session, listing what’s to be supplied with the biology kits. Once I get a final bill of materials, I can start generating POs for the components I need to order and then build a prototype kit to figure out what size box we’ll need, how the stuff will be packaged, and so on. Then we can get the first batch of 60 kits actually built.
Meanwhile, I’ll be juggling edits on the biology book with a re-write of the forensics book to make it kit-based.
So on that self reporting of use tax, what happens if you don’t ?
Here in Texas, individuals are not required to self report. Businesses are and there can be large penalties. However, the Great State of Texas is now getting third party information on out of state purchases and sending people use tax bills. I have no idea where they are getting the info but it is for large purchases (furs, etc) only.
Very nice. It would be interesting to actually KNOW how and where the buggering Gestapo get their intel.
In other, sort of related nooz, the great Granite State is now about to go the route of its neighbor, the great Green Mountain State, and Montana, Wyoming and Arizona and shit-can its stupid gun laws. Concealed carry will be A-OK, and if you still want to, you can go ahead and get yourself licensed for whatever reason. About time, and my buddies in the Gun Owners of NH are to be congratulated. Among them are paratrooper combat vets of the Korean and ‘Nam wars, fine boyz.
Unbelievably, I have a video job right on Monument Circle tomorrow (Wed). They have closed off the circle to vehicle traffic for the
Super BowlBig Game. Parking garages are closed to all but NFL-certified parking, so somebody has to ferry me downtown with my equipment. Not looking forward to this.Ran into somebody yesterday, who told me that it takes her about 3 times as long to get to/from work. She is a state employee, and they are about the only ones who did not lose their parking garage to the NFL, but even so, her life is miserable because of the Big Game.
Meanwhile, I remember when computers first appeared on the scene at work. The office manager for my area practically promised that they would shorten our work week. But they didn’t. I lost 2 assistants who did all the typing, because computer word processing made it so easy that they decided producers could do their own.
Normally, I would be in an edit suite with a tech running the equipment and doing the edits as I watched and supervised. But here I am, doing about 200 edits on a piece due next week — all by myself with my beloved Asus laptop, Bianca.
where the buggering Gestapo get their intel
Interesting questions, and very current right now for Switzerland. I am given to understand that Swiss banks are being painted (have been painted) in the US as a great evil. Unsurprisingly, the view from this side is rather different.
The US is currently using all sorts of interesting levers to essentially blackmail the Switzerland into sending the US information about bank-transactions and private correspondence between banks and customers.
As I understand it, the way is it supposed to go is this: The US has probable cause to believe that person X is committing tax fraud. With this information, the US gets a court order, presents this to Switzerland, and – after a legal review on this side – the Swiss government collects the information from the bank and delivers it as per the court order.
What the US is currently doing is demanding information about *all* US customers of several Swiss banks. Based on this information, the US intends to discover which of these customers look like they might have undeclared money. Based on this fishing expedition, the US will then get court orders. In other words, gather evidence first and then use it to establish probable cause, justifying the gathering of the evidence.
This is against Swiss law, signed international agreements, and probably even US law (though the IRS is something of a power unto itself). Switzerland has, unfortunately, mostly given in. The only thing they have done is to somehow encode the names of the US customers – with the demand that the US sign some sort of permanent agreement to stop doing this shit, before the encoding key will be released. Of course, the US has already agreed to stop demanding illegal information – several times. Until the next time some power-hungry bureaucrat want to make a name for himself.
Has any of this made the news over there?
What you don’t mention is that the US strong-armed Swiss banks into violating Swiss law by giving up information on US citizens, period. Since tax fraud against the US government was not a crime in Switzerland, Swiss banks formerly refused to give up information even if the US provided evidence of that fraud. Personally, I don’t think the US government should be able to force even US banks to give up such information, let alone Swiss banks. In fact, I wish the US government would just go away entirely, or at least be forced to subsist on voluntary donations.
I agree with Robert here, again, so I am probably on The List somewhere, again, and will probably go to Hell forthwith.
So be it.
RBT wrote:
“In fact, I wish the US government would just go away entirely, or at least be forced to subsist on voluntary donations.”
Found this link on Pournelle’s site.
http://technolog.msnbc.msn.com/_news/2012/01/30/10272373-tourists-banned-from-us-over-twitter-jokes
I wish that the TSA had to subsist on voluntary donations. I can’t believe these guys spend so much time trawling the Internet for stuff like this. And that no one there seems to have an iota of common sense. makes me scared to visit the US.
Not as scared as they are of foreigners.
That may be true of people in government, but I never met an American I didn’t like while I was visiting the US. (Well, I didn’t like the beggars hanging around outside the Smithsonian Metro station in DC.)
The family I stayed with in 2003 took me to Niagara Falls for Easter. Crossing into Canada the official who stamped our passports was quite friendly (I think he was in a Mounties uniform – do that do that work too?). Coming back to the US the guy who checked our passports was fairly abrupt. Not unpleasant, just curt, like he had the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Mounties don’t do border checks anymore. They used to during the Klondike gold rushes, but are more concerned with speeders, rather than criminals. Though they may have a list of trouble makers from the Canadian Consulate in Sydney. We have offices there, and in Canberra.
Americans on their own, or in small groups, are very nice people, and obviously had been taught well by their English masters before slipping the leash. They’ve become a bit feral now, and worse since 9/11. I shudder to think what would have happened if they had reacted to Pearl Harbor the same way. I expect we would alle sprechen Deutsches jetzt.
That may be true of people in government, but I never met an American I didn’t like while I was visiting the US.
This is a real oddity to people visiting the US. How can such nice folk have such a crappy government. How can they, themselves, turn into such petty martinets when they work for the government?
We’re visiting the US again this year, but I can well imagine it will be the last time for a very long time…
A work colleague said 20 years ago something like “Americans are great in their own country”, and then gave some examples of obnoxious behaviour by Americans outside the US. Mostly the Americans I’ve met outside the US have been quite pleasant. Two American families I met in 1993 on a coach tour of Switzerland and Austria were pointed contrasts. Both had two teenage daughters but one set of sisters were quiet, polite and nice to each other and everyone else. The other pair of sisters were always having verbal fights with each other and their parents. I avoided them as much as I could.
Well, there are 310 million of us, so one is bound to meet the dregs now and then, here or elsewhere in the world.
And we slipped our English masters’ leash a very long time ago, twice, and then bailed them out, twice, while other parties are still curled up cozily at their feet.
And it’s most comfortable, curling up close to TWO fires! 😉