3 reasons you should care about sales tax - Will's Whiteboard

When you're focused on growing your business, it's hard to give two hoots about sales tax. But you just might be surprised by all the ways sales tax can impact your bottom line. Watch the video to learn three reasons you should give a hoot about sales tax.

Transcript

Hi, welcome to Will’s whiteboard. I’m Will. Today, we are going to leave the whiteboard behind and talk about three reasons you should care about sales tax.

Do you like waiting? No? Neither do your customers. If you’ve got an online store and they’re trying to purchase an item, going through your checkout process, but things are taking a long time because your shopping cart’s having trouble calculating the tax or the tax is somehow confusing, guess what? They’re going to be upset. They might even go on down the information superhighway and shop at a competitor’s place.

Reason number two you should care about sales tax: We all know that the big kids make the rules and the same is true in business. If you want to play with the big boys and girls, like, if you want to do business with a big box store and you’re a smaller business, chances are they’re going to make you handle the sales tax. Give you an example: you are a drop shipper, you wanna ship their stuff, and they might make you collect sales tax on their behalf. Why? They know sales tax sucks. It’s a pain to deal with so if you want to play with the big boys and girls, you better get your grownup pants on when it comes to sales tax.

Reason number three you need to care about sales tax: States need money. They need to build roads, public libraries, and other public facilities. Why do you think state sales tax exists in the first place? You don’t wanna get between a state and its money. They could sock you with penalties, interest, and worst case, criminal charges. But some states take it up a notch. States like California will actually publish a public list of shame where they list the top sales tax delinquents, their name, their address, how much they owe. It is very embarrassing.

That does it for three reasons that you should care about sales tax. I hope it helps and I’ll see you next time.