The Form
I executed and mailed the Power of Attorney form to Oklahoma. They will not accept a faxed copy.
Time wasted on this incident: 10 minutes
Money wasted on this incident: 41 cents postage
No answer
In reference to my post of January 10, the Davidson County Animal Control department has not yet returned my phone calls so I can get the rabies books and unused tags back to them. I called Metro Health and they advised me that they only know that the people at Animal Control are new to handling the book & tags and that they were behind schedule. It is amazing; they emphasized in a letter that they need to get the books to the State Health department by the 31st. If they don’t reply to my voice mails regarding a pickup, how can I be held responsible!
Time wasted on this incident: 30 minutes
More Oklahoma Withholding trouble
As stated in my posting of 1-2-2008, Oklahoma cannot keep track of tax filings. ADP notified me that they tried to contact OK to resolve the matter, but Oklahoma will not deal with ADP since they do not have Power of Attorney. Yet another form to have to deal with!
Time wasted on this incident: 5 minutes
Secure Borders
I decided to drive the motorhome from Phoenix to West Virginia. Today, just outside of El Paso, Texas, the freeway was restricted to just one lane and traffic was backed up for over a mile. The cause: an Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) checkpoint. As we inched along through the checkpoint (in a vehicle large enough to haul at least a dozen Mexicans), we were waved right through by an ICE agent who was leaning back in a chair. I will sleep well tonight knowing that our borders are secure!
Time wasted on this incident: 30 minutes
Use Tax
I received a Use Tax return from Nevada. I have never gotten one of these things before for NV. Use Tax is one of those special hidden taxes that is virtually unknown to many businesses and consumers. Here is how it works: If an individual or business buys a product via the Internet, phone or mail order and does not pay the sales tax from the state in which the vendor is located, your home state expects you to pay a “use tax” equal to the sales tax that would have been paid if you purchased the item locally.
For Nevada, we had no such purchases. However, we are still required to send in a form with a bunch of zeros and would be subject to a penalty if we did not!
Time wasted on this incident: 5 minutes
Money wasted on this indicent: 41 cents postage
More unenployment rate changes
I found that I could submit rate change requests on ADPs web interface. I changed the rates for OK and AZ for 2008.
Time wasted on this indicent: 5 minutes
Looking for two cents
I dug into what will likely be the most difficult part of tax preparation for 2007. Every two weeks, our payroll service sends me a CD-ROM with about 50 pages of reports detailing who was paid what and how much was withheld. Since we do business in 5 states, there are at least 10 different federal and state departments that get a cut. I need to break down all of these withholdings and payment by state and department.
For the first pay period I dug into, it took about two hours to find the combination of payroll reports that would allow me to make a stab at this task. I found that the reports for tax paymens were off by TWO CENTS. I am sure that this is due to rounding errors. But the question remains – which jurisdiction was the lucky recipient?
After wasting another hour trying to track this down, I gave up and simply told my accountant that he will have to make an adjustment somewhere – I am not going to spend hours and hours looking for what should amount to less than one dollar for the whole years. He concurred.
Time wasted on this indicent: 4 hours
Employee W-2s
We received the W-2 forms from ADP to send to our employees.
Time wasted on this incident: 30 minutes
Money wasted on this incident: $341.95 postage and processing fees charged by ADP
Rabies tags
One of the bigest headaches with my job is rabies tags. Since we operate clinics in 13 cities stattered in 9 different counties in 5 states, there are about 100 possible possibilities as to how we process rabies certificates. For example, our staff in the Memphis area carries around three different sets of tags since there are different tags depending on which town you live in. And, of course, no tag can be issued without a government form!
I just finished completing the books/forms for the Metro Health Department for Nashville, Tennessee. These had to be sent to me (in Phoenix) by my staff so I could complete the forms and sign them. I also have to prepare a check. I will now have to send them back to one of the Petco stores in Nashville so that a worker from the Nashville Sanitation department can drive over to the store and pick up the book. Metro Health is unwilling to allow me to simply ship the mess to them directly.
Time wasted on this incident: 45 minutes
Money wasted on this incident: $34.00 in shipping charges
More 1099 fun
One of the vendors for TC Tech refused to provide me with her SSN for the 1099. She left on bad terms and has ignored my mailings. My accountant told me to file a separate form 1099 for her. This made the job that much more difficult since I had to prepare two separate batches.
Time wasted on this incident: 60 minutes
Money wasted on this incident: $15.99 in postage