Death & Taxes
Today I was told about an acquaintance of mine, a business owner, who had the following experience last week.
At some point during the business day, while he was working alone, a group of individuals showed up at his store. Some of these individuals were armed. They demanded the keys to his store and locked him outside. They emptied the cash register. They came back out and demanded to know where the safe was and he told them, truthfully, that he did not have one. They said, “We don’t believe you. We’re going to search you store.” They searched the store and failed to find a safe. Then they demanded he give them $5,500 right then or they would shut him down. They would not take a check. He called his wife and she put together enough money to get a $5,500 bank check and brought it to her husband. They then returned the keys to his store and told him he could stay in business, but that he now owed them $10,000.
This being New Jersey, I guess this story isn’t all that unusual, except that in this case it was not a gang or the mafia. This was a representative of the State of New Jersey’s Division of Taxation accompanied by New Jersey state police officers.
It figures that only someone who worked for the government would think that a good way to get money out of someone is to take away their livelihood. You would have to be an idiot to think that a closed business may somehow be a better source of revenue than an open one. Clearly, this is solely a form of extortion. Only in this case it is the government saying, “You have to pay us to protect yourself from us.”
My acquaintance is not the only one this is happening too. In this diner’s case it took a week for them to reopen.
A key to the dynamic here is that the IRS and State Departments of Taxation believe that by destroying some businesses — and in some case individuals — they achieve increased levels of compliance amongst those who remain. It is essentially a policy of terror.