As if the guys in Albany were elected just to prove everything I say on this site correct:
State tax officials, under orders from cash-strapped Albany to ramp up their audit and compliance efforts, have begun to enforce one of the more obscure distinctions within the state’s sales tax law.
In New York, the sale of whole bagels isn’t subject to sales tax. But the tax does apply to “sliced or prepared bagels (with cream cheese or other toppings),” according to the state Department of Taxation and Finance. And if the bagel is eaten in the store, even if it’s never been touched by a knife, it’s also taxed…
And while sliced bagels are subject to sales tax, a sliced loaf of bread at a bakery isn’t, according to tax officials.
And the bagel brownshirts are literally cracking down bigtime on bagel store owners who did not even understand the “law” in the first place:
Kenneth Greene, the Rochester-based franchisee, said he was recently hit with a tax bill for not charging sales tax on any sliced bagel. Typically, he thought, sales tax is applied only when a bagel is sliced for a sandwich or for cream cheese and butter. Whole bagels are not taxed when they are eaten off the premises, state officials said.But Greene found out the hard way: The state ordered him to pay back taxes for three years on bagels that were sliced and sold, but not taxed.And it’s a lot of dough, for him and his customers. Most places in New York charge an 8 percent tax on purchases. Greene said the back taxes are “a lot of money,” but wouldn’t say how much.
And of course you know that those bagel store owners are just so flush with cash. This is a great way to get that small-business job creation engine started. If anyone who had entrepreneurial ideas takes notice of this story, it’s bye-bye New York State. Well, actually, most of them left already.
I’ll remind my readers in case it is not abundantly clear. This is not some isolated incident. These thugs rule you in your village, your town, your state and your federal government. Yet you believe that they should be entrusted with the awesome powers of guns and trillions of dollars to coercively organize most of what you think of as civil society? Clearly I have failed and all the other true liberals have failed.
We should all start baking bagels and giving them away for free, pre-sliced, outside of our homes. Think about all the laws you’d be breaking – selling without the permission of the lords to do so, ignorance of the food safety do-gooders who must inspect every morsel of food “sold” in the world, illegally not charging tax, having your 12 year old kids help you with the effort violates child labor laws, and not paying them violates minimum wage statutes, not putting in a ramp for the disabled to come get a free bagel violates the Americans with Disabilities Act (you know, because you had the fortitude to set up a business, you incur an obligation to help a certain group of people), and if you don’t recycle the materials you used for the bagel shop you would get arrested by the green police too (ok, I made that last one up, but that day is coming, mark my words).
Happy days.
UPDATE: Holy cow … in the you can’t make this stuff up category, only 10 hours after I ranted above, I have the following hit my inbox: “High-tech carts will tell on Cleveland residents who don’t recycle…” and we wonder why 50,000 people have left Cleveland in this decade alone.
