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Politics : BuSab -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Jorj X Mckie who wrote (18456)	10/22/2013 8:05:47 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 23934

I Am Not Sure the State of Florida Understands This Whole Internet Thingie October 21, 2013, 10:05 am Every three years I have to endure a sales tax audit from the State of Florida. This year they actually sent me well in advance a list of all the paperwork they needed. I sent everything to them electronically weeks ago. So why do they have their auditor fly to Phoenix, stay in a hotel, and do her analysis of this paperwork on her laptop in my office? In the hour since she has been here she has not asked me for one thing. It is just bizarre. Given that I have been audited by them twice in the past and never owed more than forty or fifty bucks in back taxes from computation errors, I am pretty sure her flight cost way more than the expected value of her trip, particularly since she had done nothing so far she could not have done (better probably) in her own office. coyoteblog.com John O. Solely for intimidation. You can't have a fair tax audit without feeling like you're being intimidated by the state. coyoteblog.com Audit Update October 21, 2013, 4:43 pm The Florida auditor sitting in my one-man office was shocked to learn I would not be in the rest of the week. I said you scheduled the audit visit for today, so I changed my plans and am in the office today, but leave tomorrow. Apparently she assumed that the audit schedule gave her the right to stay as long as she wanted. She was planning to sit in my office for another 2-5 days. I told her sorry, but if she wanted to book 5 days, she should have booked five days. And by the way, if she had tried in advance to make me sit dormant in my office all week, I would not have agreed to the visit. This is just insane in an Internet world. Everything she asked for in advance was sent to her electronically. Even though she is sitting right next to me, her requests to me for more data have come by email. I can't figure any reason why she is even here, unless Florida finds it cheaper to fly her around and use other people's offices rather than provide her with one of her own. By the way, this is fairly typical of a lot of government workers in my experience. If they block a meeting on their calendar for the whole afternoon, they want it to last the whole afternoon. There are a lot of jobs out there where people are most comfortable proving their worth by showing that their calendars are always full. coyoteblog.com Florida Audit: Total Amateur Hour October 22, 2013, 10:02 am So the Flordia sales tax auditor presented her preliminary findings. She believed that I had under-reported revenues and sales taxes by half! Hundreds of thousands of dollars over three years. I told her it was absolutely impossible. No way we were off by that much. And we were not. It turns out that the FL sales tax report we fill out has five categories of revenue one must report in. One is general sales. Another is lodging. We have revenue in both and report on both lines. She had apparently only pulled the data from her system from the general sales line. Total amateur hour. Incredible. (Several years ago there would have been a good "Bush League" pun but since the governor's office has turned over the opportunity is lost). The other finding is that we had about 8-10 expense invoices (out of hundreds I had to pull yesterday by hand, ugghh) without any sales tax broken out on the invoice. This may mean the vendor did not charge sales tax, or that the vendor just did not break it out. Of course, she takes the former position, without any evidence. This expense invoice audit is an irritating result of the "use tax" rules that states are imposing to try to make one pay tax on out of state sales. But these were not out of state vendors, they were all Florida vendors. I told her that if she thought they were not charging sales tax, to go audit them. She said I had to pay. This is absurd. If I am found to have under-collected taxes from my customers, then I have to pay. She is not going to go to all my campground customers and charge them back use tax. But when I am the customer and the vendor potentially undercharges me, I have to pay as the customer? There is no consistent rule to explain why this makes sense, except for the general rule of government that they will take money from whomever they can whenever they think they can get away with it. coyoteblog.com

To: Jorj X Mckie who wrote (18456)	5/26/2016 2:39:36 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 23934

Long-time readers will know that my company privatizes the operation (but not the ownership) of public parks. I will make two-hour presentations to parks agencies about how we can improve operations quality while cutting costs by 30-50% or more, and the near-universal response is, "well, if you reduce costs, then the legislature will just reduce our appropriations." More efficient park operations, and at the margin better visitor service, don't create any wins for agency employees given their incentives. In fact, if the parks are improved and more people show up, their job is just harder. I had the manager of Arizona's premier state park tell me, absolutely in all seriousness, that he had the best job in the world if it wasn't for all the visitors. Can you imagine a McDonald's franchise manager saying that? As I have always said, government is not populated with bad people, it is populated with perfectly normal people who have terrible incentives. coyoteblog.com emphasis added

To: Jorj X Mckie who wrote (18456)	7/17/2018 7:31:34 PM
From: TimF	1 Recommendation Recommended By J.B.C. Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 23934

Meditation on a trip to the DMV I arrived at the DMV yesterday at 9 AM. My number came up at 5:45 -- you have to wait anxiously all day as you have 10 seconds to respond to your number. At 6:05, 10 hours after arrival. I was informed it was too late to take my written test so I would have to come back. As usual the place was packed, no food, no drink, two filthy restrooms. (California has an appointment system but it takes two months to get an appointment, so if you need something now or can't book a free day two months ahead of time, you wait. 10 hours. Then you still get an appointment to return two weeks later as they won't get to you.) Despite 13.2% top income tax rate, 7.5-9.5% sales tax, gas taxed to $3.80 a gallon, California cannot operate a functional DMV. Even Illinois, good old corrupt, bankrupt, Illinois, can operate a vaguely functional DMV. (Direct election of the secretary of state may have something to do with that.) Estonia, this is not. Piles of paper flow around. Technology is about 1992 -- there is a number system, so you don't stand in line for 10 hours. But no indication where you are in the queue or when they might get to you. Rebellion was in the air. Most people do not have my time flexibility. The very nice lady next to me had taken the day off work and had to arrange child care, which was going to end at a finite time. This was her second day of waiting. She was ready to start the revolution. This is not unusual. It's just a completely normal day down at the DMV. The joke has been around a long time: Do you really want the people who run the DMV to operate your health care and insurance system? But it is a good joke. The DMV is the main interface most people have with the functioning or lack thereof of a bureaucracy. The irony is that the democratic candidates in California are falling all over themselves to be stronger on "single-payer" health -- which does not just mean one fallback, but that all others are banned. The amazing thing is that citizens of this noble state are all for it, though they must, like me, each take their turn in the 10 hour line at the DMV. (I suspect many high income progressives do not realize that "single payer" means them too. No concierge medicine.) Republicans: I suggest you set up tables outside the DMV. After all, there is motor voter registration and this might get people in a good frame of mind for your message. Second thought: Things could be worse. The DMV is good proxy for the quality of government institutions. In many countries in the world you must pay a bribe to get a driver's license. In many other countries you can pay a bribe to cut through swaths of paperwork. At least in the US you can't do that. But there are countries where government actually works. When our friends on the left dream of Scandinavian health care, perhaps they should visit a Scandinavian DMV first, and agree that let's see if our government can run a DMV before it tackles health care. And don't go after me with taxes -- the cost of a functional DMV is not that high. This one just needs to expand to match the growth in its population and the complexity of the various laws it has passed. johnhcochrane.blogspot.com