It's been an annual struggle, but it's finally over. I finally ended it, once they made it impossible to continue. I'm talking about filing Sales and Use Tax with the Sate of Minnesota.
Years ago, I printed out some posters. Each was a labor of love, combining a favorite photo with an original poem. The idea came from a photo taken years earlier, in August when the morning air temperature is significantly colder than the water. A sailboat floated at anchor out in a lake up near the BWCA, morning fog enclosing it thickly enough to completely hide the rocky island a short ways behind it, sun coming in from over my shoulder lighting the boat up in gold, perfectly reflected on the mostly still surface of the lake.
I was on an early morning walk while at a retreat/workshop at YMCA Camp Northland on Burntside Lake, a few miles north of Ely. The support group I was both a member of and Board member for went there for a week each year for several years after a United Way grant paired us up with the St.Paul Y. The workshops we put on there were already emotional experiences. This scene, this one photo nobody else shot because they were all sleeping in till all they got was ordinary blue skies, was one of the top experiences from my perspective. Since I was into poetry back in those days, this cried out for a poem. It took a year or so, but I finally came up with it:
BOUND
Rising from the lake
White mists held
Our vision of the morning
Captive,
Confined
To what lay
Immediately before us,
Bound
Like sails on anchored boat
Awaiting the breeze
That would unfurl the day.
A few years later a modest inheritance allowed me the indulgence, after paying off my mortgage, of printing a bunch of those. Uh, a fairly big bunch. Then it was suggested that these would sell better if they weren't a "one-off." Thus 4 more. And of course I registered for sales tax exemption. You may have also guessed, they didn't sell well. I even got one request, after one poster was printed, if I could make him one without the poem.
(Uh, it is what it is, dude! See those numbers at the bottom, number x out of y printed? Done deal.) Fortunately I only thought that. He bought one anyway.
OK, it might have helped if I had any skills whatsoever at marketing. The poster stacks sit up in Minnesota, and I "get" to file Sales & Use tax forms annually. The first year there were a very few sales. I made sure I could do the paperwork. I was, after all, filing my own business income taxes most every year from 1970 till retirement, and filed trust forms for about 6 years, justifying every investment and penny I spent as trustee for a juvenile. In following years, my sales & use tax forms were even simpler: all zeros. The online forms changed every few years, and I had to dig out my old records and try to remember which password I used, what possibility was my user name, what's my tax ID number, but I thought I finally got it all down last year, all that information in a secure and findable spot for this year.
So this year they changed the form. Big time! I tried unsuccessfully to even be able to log in for three days. After begging for a"reminder", turns out what I'd written for my online ID wasn't what I'd used. Oops. Luckily my prompt word got it done. Now, however, instead of filling out zeros in 4 places and hitting enter, there was this gawdawful long form to complete in full, with a type font from the website of about a size 3! Dang, do they all think we "business people" are teenagers with fantastic near vision? I've needed bifocals and trifocals for... well, nevermind.
They have a phone number. For four more days it was as busy as the covid number I called to get my vaccination appointment. No way was I going to wait on that line for over an hour just for this. Covid shot, yeah. Taxes, no. Especially when I owed none. Last Friday was the deadline to file. Today, Tuesday, I finally got through in under a full minute.
I apologized, letting a very pleasant woman know that I was very frustrated and would try to be patient before explaining my issue. She needed information, of course, all of which I had ready, proving who I really was and things like my address and tax number. When she got to my birthday, as soon as I finished giving her my birth year, I added that this date was the likely reason I was having so much trouble with their changing online forms. She laughed, understand my joke while trying not to be offensive. Then she agreed that this year's changes were challenging, offering me an alternative. She really had been listening when I explained that I'd been filing all zeros for years. Would I like her to close out the company? When I asked what was involved, envisioning a nightmare of back sales taxes not paid on the front end needing to be caught up on at the back end so the state got its share. She informed me to my great relief that all it took was a few keystrokes on her part.
That simple? Seriously? Let's go for it! She "killed" it off effective 2019, meaning no filing needed for this year, no impossible forms, no penalties. I am no longer "Poetography." RIP. I'll miss the name. But not the hassle. If I change my mind about that last, I can restart the company and pretend I know an iota about marketing, but I'd have to care.
Ahhh, freedom!
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