Sales Tax

[Ron Nossaman]

Interesting.

Twenty five years ago, the powers that be in Kansas didn't require sales 
tax on labor. Then some genius in the local "blood from turnips" department 
woke up, looked around for a guaranteed source of income to support his 
no-fault lifestyle, and said "hey"!  Enter the concept of sales tax on 
labor. Up to that time, churches were exempt too, but the transcendental 
"hey!" epiphany sucked them into the fold, as it were, with the rest of us. 
Maybe ten years ago, this same seminal wellspring of genius tax legislation 
were visited by the spirits of the "random local tax" one dark and stormy 
night just before Christmas. As a result, we were summarily given the 
privilege of keeping track of and charging whatever sales tax was in effect 
on any given week in any given county of any given state in which any given 
one of us happened to have accidentally made a buck during any given month. 
Life was interesting for a while there until the bean counters in the 
"blood from turnips" department realized that the BS and paperwork involved 
in dealing with this -uh- system (even after the bulk of the abuse was 
absorbed by the legion small contractors filing the paperwork) not only 
drove a lot of small business away from any work out of area, but cost so 
much in actual hands-on labor for the collectors of said turnip blood as to 
altogether too closely resemble working for a living. This was 
insupportable! It was obviously time to simplify to take the workload from 
the shoulders of local government, without adversely affecting the 
relatively newfound windfall profits. What to do? Near infinite wisdom 
wisely dictated the mandate to us all to collect sales tax on all sales and 
labor at the current rate at the point of origin of the business. Everyone 
loved this one. The paperwork went down drastically for all concerned. The 
extractors of blood from turnips went back to their afternoon naps without 
having to actually produce documentation (or much of anything else obvious) 
for their 33.2 paid days vacation and holidays, retirement plan, sick 
leave, medical insurance (with dental), company vehicle, and carte blanche 
to destroy the business of nearly anyone they like on their whim. The 
contractors, meanwhile, got to spend their afternoons working for pay 
instead of generating idiot paperwork for turnip suckers, and the church 
lobbyists sat there in a mildly dazed state until finally, one of them 
looked around, scratched, and said "hey!". So while the extractors of B 
from T were napping and re-figuring their retirement benefits one fine warm 
afternoon, the church lobbyists sneaked their old exemption back into the 
folder. So we now charge the local rate of sales tax wherever we may do 
business, on both parts and labor, except to educational institutions, 
dealers for purposes of resale, hospitals or other "non-profit" (right) 
organizations, and churches - provided we obtain and keep on file an 
official signed tax exemption certificate from each and every one of them 
we have ever charged a penny for (tax exempt) service.

But that could change at any time, depending on who's snoring wakes whom up.
Ron N