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PaperclipPerfector  3mo ago (text post)   30112 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of August 12, 2024

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Experiment: When a plumber, electrician, or handyman has finished his job and expects payment, ask if paying in cash is OK. You will see an expression of pure joy cross his face as he answers "yes".

Ask them for a cash discount. If they don't offer one up front, which they often do. I suspect the smarter ones are offering an X% cash discount and recording an X+N% cash discount, and the dumber ones are just not recording the payment at all.

and the dumber ones are just not recording the payment at all.

I don't know anything about taxes, why are they the dumber ones?

I imagine it looks more suspicious in an audit to have records (phone, email, etc.) that you performed a job but never got paid for it vs. getting paid (but only recording a fraction of what you were actually paid).

Wait a second. Audits mean the government gets to sift through all your communications???

I suppose they only have the right to see email accounts and phone records of your business, not you personally?

As best I know an audit has nothing to do with sifting through your phone and email.

In tax audits, more often than not they take your business records at face value. They usually are just checking that you calculated tax correctly and have support for your figures. You're in deep shit and probably messed something up badly if they have suspicions about the veracity of your purchase orders and statements of work.

In financial audits...yeah you shouldn't have records of work that you've done with no recorded revenue to match. Your revenue would fail something called the completeness assertion.

This is a thinly veiled ad for some service that tracks your location for tax residency purposes, but it looks like they can subpeona all sorts of things:

https://blog.monaeo.com/when-the-tax-auditor-subpoenas-your-cell-phone-records

It's too obvious. If an auditor comes in there will be obvious tells if a fair number of jobs just aren't recorded, like too many supply purchases. Presumably a good enough financial wizard could hide most of this as well, but it will be difficult. On the other hand, figuring out that the amount of cash discount is usually overstated would be much harder to find.

If they don't offer one up front, which they often do.

Although I think it's best to leave this one until the end. When the work is done, fix the price as if there are no discounts. Only once the price is firm do you then bring up discounts.

Otherwise you get the situation where they say "Oh, that's WITH the cash discount" when you go to pay.

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