[lowercased]

My spouse did business at a collector show in Illinois years ago. We filed some sales tax thing, as we collected sales tax (as we were told to do) and remitted it. Did that for... 2 years, IIRC, then didn't do that show again. We got letters threatening that we would be penalized if we didn't fill out the form and remit our collected tax. There was no option to say 'nothing'. I mean... we did one year - put 0. Then we stopped the business. Had multiple emails, physical letters, and hours on the phone being bounced around between places to say "we don't run the business any more - we're not operating". And... no one seemed to have a way to decidedly stop these. We'd get "OK" then... 6 months later got a letter saying "you owe $x and penalties for failing to file"... I was slightly concerned about driving through Illinois at some point, thinking they might have an arrest warrant out for one of us. It took 2 years of not getting these to finally believe we're not in their system any more. Similar story for New Jersey, but it wasn't quite as bad. Still required a lot of manual work.

[throwaway894345]

Illinois online forms are egregiously bad. A couple examples off the top of my head:

I was traveling through the state and got on a toll road by accident without cash to pay the tolls, the toll booth employee said I could just pay online, pointing to a sign that said "missed a toll? pay online at <url>", so we continued our trip intending to pay the tolls online. At the end of the trip, I logged on to pay our tolls--the application insisted that we enter the specific toll IDs of each toll that we missed, even though we didn't know we were supposed to be recording any toll IDs. If you didn't know the toll IDs, you could use a map application to look up the toll IDs, but the map application would crash within a second of opening it and even if you managed to get a screenshot the resolution was so low that the text was indecipherable. When I called the support number, they told me that I would be fined triple the cost of the tolls if I didn't pay within a week, but I would be able to pay without knowing the specific toll IDs that I missed. When I asked the agent to tell me what tolls I missed (clearly they knew if they were going to fine me), they told me they couldn't tell me for another week. I pointed out that this would be after the toll deadline and they relentlessly tried to avoid acknowledging that simple fact. Eventually I sent them my best guess about what I owed with a letter stating what I had attempted and that I would contact a lawyer about any fines and never heard from them again.

Some years later, after moving to Chicago, I had to file state taxes for the first time. The state issued me a driver's license with a 12 digit number, but the state tax form only allowed me to authenticate with an 8 digit Illinois driver's license number (the other acceptable forms of identification didn't apply to me for reasons I no longer remember).

[SoftTalker]

Illinois is one of the most administratively fucked up and corrupt states in the country. Four of the last ten governors have been so bad they actually served prison time and the current governor appears to be cut from the same cloth.

https://www.illinoispolicy.org/4-of-illinois-past-10-governo...

[throwaway894345]

Illinois has a history of corruption for sure, but illinoispolicy.org is right-wing propaganda. Also, it’s corrupt and bureaucratic for a purple state but it’s still much better than the median red state (my native Iowa went from purple to solid red a decade ago, and we nosedived on everything from education to economy to deficit spending to public health to corruption).

[tardedmeme]

I feel like half of these are quickly resolved in court when you explain what happened and the judge calls the state a bunch of fucking morons and dismisses the case. But the other half of the time the judge won't use common sense. Also the state is relying on you not wanting to show up in front of a judge out of your own state to contest what I presume is a relatively small amount of dollars.

[throwaway894345]

I don’t doubt it, but just so we’re clear having to go to court is already a colossal failure in the first place.

[hilariously]

Huh, in my state the secretary of state is where you register a business, and you just go to the website and click "this is no longer operating" and then they stop sending you letters to file your 0 taxes.

[amluto]

You’re making a fascinating assumption that the tax authorities’ systems are at all integrated with the Secretary of State systems.

[hilariously]

You'd only think that if you misunderstood "in my state" to mean "in all states"

[SoftTalker]

Same.

[jonathanlydall]

In South Africa we have a TV license which any shop selling TV’s is required by law to report the buyer’s TV license number for any purchase.

The idea is that it funds public broadcasting and productions thereof, but like a lot of SOEs here, there is loads of corruption and inefficiencies, I only use my TV for streaming of content which is not produced locally, so I resent having to pay it each year.

However, it’s apparently a mission to get off it, even if you sell your TV you’re most certainly going to be harassed for years by debt collectors and what not.

Unlike your case though (where I expect the fine is not nothing), it’s only like R250/y (like 13USD) and they’ve smartly (which is surprising for an otherwise largely incompetent org), made it easy to pay. I get an SMS reminder and can have paid it by credit card within 2 minutes. So I’ll probably not bother trying to get off it as it’s so much more effort and a pretty small amount of money and hassle.

[beAbU]

Heh, took me about a year after moving from SA to Ireland to get them to leave me alone about my tv license.

Here they have a tv license as well, but so far I've sidestepped it because I shipped my TV over, but one day I'll probably need to pay for one again. Only problem is now its something like 250 euro, not Ront, so it's a lot more pricey!

[jonathanlydall]

I'd rather pay EUR 250 a year when I know the money is used for genuine public benefit rather than ZAR 250 a year where it's mostly enriching people who don't do anything of real value.

[calvinmorrison]

Thats OK my county keeps threatening to pickup my dog if i dont get a new license. Maybe they have a special kennel for Urns?

[llbbdd]

I was going to comment "dog license???" but I looked it up for my county and I had no idea this was a thing. I'm in awe. I adopted an adult dog ~9 years ago. He has issued literally one single bark in that span. He stays indoors or in my fenced-in yard 100% of the time because of some health issues. I'm supposed to pay an annual fee for this or they'll fine me?? Nobody ever told me this, not the shelter, not the vet he goes to regularly who presumably has the ability to check this.

There are also apparently canvassers paid by the county who go door to door checking for this?! I'm not the kind of person to typically nitpick about where my taxes are going, but...I retroactively and broadly apologize for every lighthearted jab I may have ever made about TV licensing in the UK. This is beyond dumb in comparison. And my condolences, the fact that this system leads to them harassing you in this way is completely insane.

[dashundchen]

Why is dog licensing that crazy? You are required to license and register a car that's used in public. Your dog may always be on your property but for almost every other dog that is not that case.

A dog can be a public health threat, in both terms of disease and attacks on people or other dogs. Many states require rabies vaccinations for example .The owners are ultimately liable for that and there should be a way to track that.

Plus the fees frequently fund animal control and shelters in many areas.

[llbbdd]

Simple registration I have less of a problem with for some of the reasons you listed. Cross-reference with vet records, have fines specifically for missing rabies vaccinations etc for the sake of public health, sure. Maybe even bill me a nominal paperwork amount for the initial registration, maybe waive it for adoptions or make it an automatic thing the shelter does and builds into their fees. Having an annual subscription to my own dog is what seems ridiculous.

In theory the fees for car registration go towards maintaining the infrastructure that cars make use of. Taking a dog out in public doesn't have many similar externalities, and there are already targeted fines for off-leash dogs or for failing to clean up after them. I live in an area with a decent amount of dog-friendly public infrastructure, but that just seems like it would fall under regular parks funding, and I don't get a bill every year asking me how much time I spent at the park.

As far as where the funding goes, I'm sure that could be done better. Everyone in the county benefits from funded animal control and shelters. By adopting my dog from a shelter I have actually reduced the burden of responsibility on the local shelter system, which then seems backwards to tax me for.

Registration + annual fees aside though, door-to-door dog inspections are where I would absolutely draw the line. That we have any room at all to fund that is crazy to me.

[pluralmonad]

I've never asked anyone's permission to keep my dog. She barks at every car that pulls in my driveway like a good girl.

[turtlebits]

I was about to comment the same thing. I just got an e-mail about pet licensing, it's been almost 10 years since my dog passed.

[throw1234567891]

They’ll just euthanise him. Better pay the license.

[x______________]

>Maybe they have a special kennel for Urns?

Unless a new breed has been named, or an /s was missing, I'm not sure they will be very successful in their recovery attempts.

[cucumber3732842]

Why would they ever fix the system. Some number of people will just pay it and those people are pure profit. Heck, fixing the system costs money.

It's the same evil math behind every other billing scam that sails under the flag of ignorance.

Speaking of ignorance, to all those people saying you forgot to fill out a form, there are several states that are known to be maliciously sloppy about this sort of thing. You file a form and they silently reject it or billing you anyway on some questionable pretext because they can. NY is one of them. Doesn't surprise me that IL is too since both states are kinda cash strapped.

[vharuck]

>Why would they ever fix the system. Some number of people will just pay it and those people are pure profit. Heck, fixing the system costs money.

The system is run by employees of whatever agency handles taxes. Neither the employees nor the agency keep a portion of the taxes. If they do not have the money or will to fix it, people are supposed to pressure their representatives to give them the money and mandate.

If this truly came down to an intent to squeeze more money out of people than they owed, that would almost always come from the law's wording. Again, pressure the representatives.

The only times an agency would squeeze money is when it's funded in large part by fines or fees, or if an employee is committing fraud and pocketing some of the money.

[gottorf]

> pressure the representatives

In the GP's case, it sounds like they were on a road show, and they do not live in Illinois at all. Of course, that doesn't prevent them from contacting a IL state representative for redress, but it is an edge case of sorts.

[lowercased]

Correct. We were in Michigan, then later North Carolina. We did collector shows in a few states. The organizers told us to collect the tax and gave us vendors information on how to remit to the state agency. We didn't do it at first, then later, as more money came in, we did it for a few years in one state, then another, trying to be 'good' about the whole thing. Was a massive headache.

What would have made so much more sense is for a state agent to have someone come on site to trade shows like this to make it easy/simple to fill in the proper forms, take money, and increase state inflow. Two people working for a couple days would be a few hundred dollars(?). At a tradeshow with 200 vendors, most doing thousands and some tens of thousands in sales... it would be relatively easy money.

That obviously becomes intrusive to some folks, but... would have helped those states and made things easier on us.

[pnw]

2 years? California chased one guy for taxes for 3 decades.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Franchise_Tax_Board_of_Califor...

[elAhmo]

You can't just start collecting sales tax before registering with the state, and likewise to stop collecting you need to deregister. It is a fairly standard procedures every accountant is aware of.

[lowercased]

Sure you can. It's what we as vendors were told to do by the show organizers. They told us the rates to collect and gave us info as to how/where to remit the money. States absolutely would take the money.