Roper Family Blog Spot: December 2010

Where do I begin! I could write a book on all the things they have done to us! I could write an entire series on all the crap they have started to pull in the last year! In the last 3 weeks this is a picture of all the mail we have received from the following people. Oh and the first one you see is actually a check from the IRS even though in a previous letter they said we owed them money from 2009... So why am I complaining about receiving a check? Well the catch is if we cash this check and it is not our money... then the IRS will charge you penalties and interest on the money they would have earned if it had been in their account. Can you believe that?

Internal Revenue Service
Idaho State Tax Commission
Health and Welfare
Idaho Deparment of Labor

This does NOT include the one I received today in the mail from the Idaho State Tax Commission for a past due bill from taxes in 2007 that I guess we underpaid. Isn't it nice of them to finally tell us! This $46.44 bill is now doubled with penalties and interest because it took them 4 years to tell us! Do you not think I would have paid a $46.00 bill!!! Lets stop to think about how much it cost the government for them to go back 4 years in our tax records to figure this out,.

We are a small plumbing business with "ONE" employee and most of this paperwork is in regards to this ONE employee. It is absolutely ridiculous. I am so tired of trying to run this small business and being taxed to death on it. There is something wrong with owning a business and making less money then your employees! There is something wrong with that especially when you are the one taking the risks and working longer hours.

We talked to our accountant (Being charged $50 an hour) about this insane amount of paperwork and to sort through this pile of mess and he said that right now government agencies are digging back as far as they possibly can to find any possible penny they have overlooked in the last few years and then backcharging you. I know first hand... we are experiencing it. They have literally flipped us upside down, hung us by our toes, and shook out every nickel and dime we had and took it from us. You wonder why small business' resort to paying employees "under the table." Because they literally can't afford to pay these insanely high taxes you have put on us.

I am so angry, so annoyed and so upset. I see my husband go to work every day and work his butt off in sub zero temperatures so that the government can take away every dollar that we earn. You want the economy to thrive? Then quit taxing small business to the point that they cannot afford employees and have to shut down. We decided to lay off our last employee today. We cannot afford to pay him because they just increased our unemployment taxes again for next year. It's not worth the hassle anymore. It costs us more money to hire on help then to just do the work ourselves. That means my husband will just have to work EVEN harder then he aleady does to keep his business floating in this crappy economy. I am just so tired of this. When you have to lay off an employee, you feel like you are letting a family down when you cannot afford to keep them on anymore... and especially right before the holidays. It was one of the hardest decisions we had to make, but unfortunately it had to be done.

Thank you government for all you have done for us... in the last 3 years we have laid off 12 employees, because your theory of raising taxes and cutting benefits didn't work.... You would rather build roads and bridges then to help a small business thrive.