An independent contractor who has only 1 customer is by law considered an employee. If you're provided a desk, equipment of any kind, security access as an employee is (doesn't have to sign in, etc), is issued commands and job tasks by management, averages over 36 hours per week over a 3 month period or longer, has a dedicated manager, is expected to show up and work regular hours, etc, then the contractor is simply an employee who chooses to not accept HR to process their tax paperwork. In fact, in many states, it is ILLEGAL to have an "independent contractor" not be on the books if at any time their contract is open ended or not related to a specific task with a defined completion date. If he's there ofr a "contract job" where the job ends given a sety of conditions, and where he's the only one doing the work (not part of a team of other full time contractors), then he may very well be a contractor, but then he's got the power to negotiate or walk away as well, and should have a business contract with them, and not have filled out an employment application...
I had an employer try to pull this BS in CT. He thought it would be a great idea to fire us all, hire us back at a 10% pay raise, but save all the benefits, vacation, Social security and HR costs, etc. he saved about $300/week per each of us, and we got $50-100 more... Come tax time, we found out the hard way that just because an employer doesn't pay your matching SS costs and medicare, that does NOT mean it does not have to get paid... i had a $4K tax debt to deal with under this arrangement.
We spoke to a lawyer, and the state department of labor, and the guy got fined big time, and we each got the back pay X3, our tax debt reassigned to his firm, and 10% of what they took out of his ass for reporting him. During the process, he terminated us all instantly, so we also got compensation for unlawful termination and loss of work pay (plus unemployment on top). They also found out he'd been doing this for YEARS in cycles, and got him for a few hundred grand in unpaid taxes, and last I heard he was still serving a 9 year prison sentence for tax evasion (he tried to move all the money and the house to relative's accounts so they could not put leans on it when he refused to pay up). They took everything he had, business home and cars.
Contractors by definition can not be on salary. If you;re buddy is only paid 40 hours as a contractor, he needs to send them a bill and threaten to send a copy to the labor board and the attorney general of the state. Have him tell them he wants time and a half back pay, plus time and a half vacation compensation, plus $300 per payroll period in leiu of stiffer fines from the government, and give them a copy of the FLSA sections refering to the definitions of contractor and employee.
They're 1 day on, 2 days off in most places first of all, for full time firemen (mostly limited to drivers of rigs and some specialists, expect in big cities).
They are NOT provided food. They community cook in most houses, all chipping in for dinner and sharing cooking and cleaning duties. They're also not paid for time eating meals if they're permitted to leave the house to get them (or to run errands).
Most have families, and I can assure you, sleeping in a strange bed 1 night in 3, away from wife and kids is something that should be compensated for much more highly.
I know many good men who worked for a fire district in our state. They had to sue the county for back pay and compensation for a miriad of payroll violations. 1) pay must be a 14 day period for firemen (7 for almost everyone else), yet they were only counting overtime on a rolling 28 day period, which shorted them an average of 3 hours a week if I remomber. 2) they actually worked 25.5 hours on shift, not 24, but somehow the difference was missed in their contract. 3) they were not paid for meetings. 4) they could not leave the firehouse except as a group in the appropriate fire trucks, yet were not paid for mael time on the closk. 5) they were not paid comp time appropriately when they did not get 5 hours uninterupted sleep. 6) they were not given their vacation allotments properly. (only earned 12 hours per pay period, but overtime compensation did not make adjustments to this). The average 5 year man got over $15K in back bay benefits out of the lawsuit, and the county paid over a million in one-time damages, and incurred a 20% increase in house costs due to the ongoing increased wages (what they should have been payong all along, but never budgeted for).
1) get written confirmation from your boss you are not elligible for overtime and on-call pay. Show him a copy of the FLSA related to on-call work and have them explain why they fee it does not apply to your position. 2) work as long as you feel you'de like to for that firm. 3) at some point later, present a copy of the FLSA 29 CFR 17 defining on-call pay requirements, having this notorized by a lawyer is nice too. Even an anonymous call to the labor board in your state may also work so you can remain anonymous and reap the benefits without job loss. 4) take large settlement check for all logged time (at time and a half at least, plus additional compensation as best as you can negotiate). 4a) if company offers your continued employment, great, if not, you have a real nice paycheck, plus back pay 4b) if check not offered, sue, you'll be due at least 3 times the back pay at time and a half, plus all your legal fees. It's a cut and dry case, you'll be compensated additionally for time lost, and likely will never appear in court.
Here's the conditions outlined in the FLSA regarding who should be paid for on-call waiting time (on call actual time on a call helping someone is assumed you'll be paid for, this is the "sitting around" time you should also be paid for...):
--Geography. How far can an on-call worker stray from the jobsite? The more restricted he or she is, the more likely it is that on-call time is compensable. Before cell phones and pagers, on-call people often had to be at home, by the phone. Now they can be anywhere, so the issue is less clear. That often brings it down to a matter of
--Response Time. How long a time do you allow for on-call people to respond? That frequently spells how far away they can be. If you demand the person be on-site in 10 minutes, says Jorgensen, the time is likely to be compensable. If it’s 60 minutes, he believes the opposite is true.
--Call Frequency. How often is the person actually called? In one court case, Jorgensen reports, an employee called three to five times a day was ruled to be working and had to be paid. In another case, one called six times in a year was not deemed so.
--Uniqueness. A fourth factor relates to how many of your workers can do the needed work. If there’s a pool of employees available, and employees can trade off the on-call responsibility, there’s less evidence that any one of them is restricted personally.
--Alcohol restrictions. If the company requires you to remain sober during on-call time, likely you qualify for pay during the entire time.
Other things that may factor in regionally or at the state level: - additional compensation for interrupted meals, including at the least pay for the intire time of the meal plus the interruption, and potentially fair compensation for the cost of the meal. - minimum 5 hours uninterupted rest clause. Get woken up at 3AM after going to sleep at 11PM. Have to be at work at 8AM next day, so you get up at 5:30. You did not get 5 hours uninterupted, so you must be paid the ENTIRE 8 HOURS OF SLEEP as if you were awake/ - no alternate compensation: can't be compensated with comp time, only payroll. In states where comp-time is approved comensation for on-call work, that must be at 150% the comp rate (equiv of overtime compensation pay). Further, an employer in most states can not make you leave early because you worked late the night before, nor cut your hours to below your average work week in order to avoid overtime. - OSHA and other FLSA regulations on max time allowable at work in a 24 hour period (varies by job title as well, for instance emergency worker, driver, etc).
I've worked On-Call shifts with a number of companies before.
Here's the deal: The FLSA [Fair Labor Standards Act] regulations provide that "[a]n employee who is required to remain on call on the employer's premises or so close thereto that he cannot use the time effectively for his own purposes" is considered to be "working." 29 C.F.R. [section] 785.17
It is against the law for a on-call person to be paid salary. They are non-exempt employees by definition. Any time spent fulfilling required job duties outside of the office must be compensated. Overtime pay scales may or may not apply by job description.
Since a home system, paid for at least in part by an employer, including compensated phone/internet bills and job requirements to maintain a home computer for work purposes (or a provided corporate computer for use at home, including rotated on-call hardware shared by several people) is an extension of the office and the duties of the job, that home system is essentially ruled by the courts to BE the office when on-call. Anytime an employer requires an on-call person to remain in their home, or in proximity to a computer system and to carry and answer a phone routed by the company at specific hours, then that person, under the FLSA, is in fact WORKING. The rate they're paid for that time spent "waiting" for a call may be billed at varying rates, but generally not less than 50% of regular pay, and any time actually on a call would be bileld at the standard rate for that employee (or overtime rate if it applies). Many companies pay a base "convenience" wage to people who are on call but take no calls during that time.
The Supreme Court, in previous rulings, has also concurred. If you are bound to a location, unable to leave and persue personal activities (say, go to a movie, go out to dinner across town, play video games online, go shopping at something other than a local grocery store, etc), or are mandated to be at a computer to handle calls within X minutes of a notice of an alert (the "you can do whatever you want, but you only have 30 minutes to answer a page" idea), then you are essentially work bound, and not free to use your time at your own lesiure. For example, if while on-call, you could go spend a weekend at your parents, so long as you answer calls per company policy, and meet SLAs for handling issues, they you are only required to be paid while actually working, but if that company required you to stay "within 15 minutes of a connected computer at all times while on-call" then you are work bound, and must be compensated at at least a base acceptible rate during that time, including time-and-a-half as mandated for hours over 40.
For example, at one of my employers, all i was required to do was return a paged call within 30 minutes. once the call was returned, it took about 5 minutes to determine what the issue was, but we had a 4 hour response SLA, so you could tell a customer, "I'm on call, and not at home, I'll call you back in 2 hours..." and that was acceptible. We were only paid for time actually logged on calls (rounded to the nearest hour). At another job, The 1 week a month you were on call, you were expected to keep a quiet household, be at home at all times aside from quick errands, and if you got a call, it had to be answered immediately, and you had to be logged in within 20 minutes of the call. We were paid 50% time for all hours "on call" except meals and sleeping and 100% time on calls (and time and a half as it applied only to time on calls).
Further, in many states (including this one), even if only billable when actually on a call, it is illegal to be paid for less than 3 hours in any 24 hour period, regardless of the number of hours worked. It's also illegal to be compensated for less than 1 hour for any block of time spent working that is more than 1 hour apart from another billable hour. For example: on Sunday, you get a call at 10AM that lasts 30 minutes. You get another call at 3PM that lasts only 15 minutes. They have to pay yo
1) universal default applies not to only if you're late on a payement to them, but if you're late on a payment to ANYONE ELSE, including completely unrelated companies, even including if that late payment showed up on your credit report in error due to a processing delay or computer glitch.
2) Credit us? unlikely. Errors on your credit report? 80% of americans will have at least 1 falsely reported itewms on their credit report in roughly a 3 year rolling term. Also, universal default can trigger simply for APPLYING for more credit from someone else... (like tryinfg to buy a new car).
3) credit card company have a misbilling, incorrectly calculate interest based on grace periods, add "protection services" to your account, change your interest rate, add an annual fee, yea, they do that... Ive had a few make the corrections. Others I have to cancel and leave, but that means getting another card to replace it. Do that just 2-3 times a year and you're knocking 60-100 points of your mean beacon score. That's gonna cost you hundreds on a car loan or thousands on a house next time you go to finance something. It is NOT worth the risk.
Besides, debit is free, and, for every $40K i run through the card (every 7 mopnths on my current pace), I get a $100 gift card to a store of my choice.
Walkig the bridge? you get a 25 day grace poriod on purchases. You buy something, 2 days later a bill posts and they conveniently leave that off. Post office send the bill low class mail so it takes a good week to get to you, you open it, pay it immediately, but you missed a few transactions that were not posted on that bill. Next month, bam, finance charges... They'll watch your bill schedule of automatic payments against the card, and rest you billing cycle so the largest single 2 business day loop lands on the cycle closing dates, and they'll get tyhat interest every month unless you manually go online and make multiple payements every month (if they offer such a system, only 2 of my 4 cards do).
1: all the comparrisons in the article were apples/oranges...
2: depejnds on your definition of cooking. Lets defin this more as "classic home cooking" aka, from scratch... Again, fine print assumes a good cook!
3: WHAT!?! Debit card is FREE. Credit card incurs at leats a yearly fee, plus interest if you don'y pay during grace period in full. Also, my debit card pays me about $100 every 6-9 months since I get $100 in gift cards for every 40K in transactions i run through it (and since I include 2 mortgages, 3 car payments, my insurance deductible, and every bill i have, and all the purchases we make, that goes quick).
I have 4 credit cards, the only time i use them is for truly interest free, and as a backup in emergencies (extended unemployment, major repair, etc) The rewards points are insufficint to make the trouble of manual payment tracking worth it (since the grace period if 25 days, but only a fraction of transdactions show up on the bill during that period, so sending 2-3 checks to them each month is required to avoid finance charges completely).
Max withdrawl from my account via debit transactions is $1,000. Only my mortgage company and car loan have exemptions to that, or anytime i call in and personally authorize excess charges.
I keep several grand in checking, and a few more in savings, so a 2-3 day issue if I didn't catch it myself in time (especially easier since I've actually had my bank call me to question transactions on the fly), is not a big deal. I have once had an issue where multiple holds against my account caused an issue, but a call to the 24/7 bank line solved it and they unlocked purchasing power based on my account history and a sim-ple explanation.
1) i get reward points. About $100 return for every 40K run through the card, but since I run virtually every payemnt I make through it (including 2 mortgages), that adds up quick.
2) 1 month savings interest on the $2-3K you might roll through in routine spending defered 25 days is not enough to bother with.
3) can't argue that one
4) I've disputed numerous debit card charges (mostly double charging, but someone did get my card number at one point and make a few internet purchases). Money was back in my account in hours. Since the card has a max purchase per 24 hours with the exception of pre-approval for purchases rung up by my mortgage company (or my own call-in authorizations) it's pretty hard to cause my bank account damage, and any damage would be reversed same day anyway.
Pro camera, $2,000 price tag, sure... 8MP is fine for basic shots, 12MP is fine for high qaulity and close ups, things you might blow up bigger... The issue is the that only high SPEED low noise sensors are all in cameras I can't come close to affording.
8MP sensors compared, including the CPU doing image capture and recod behind it, there's no comparrison to film yet unless you can afford true pro qaulity stuff, or don;t do any high speed or low light motion shots.
um, yea, this has very little to do with D&D, and seems to be a rant from some chick about "role playing" and sex, and how though D&D is kinda cool, role playing that kind of character and relationships should not be mixed. Also seems to be about her getting hit on in book and comic book stores...
dull and off topic.
I was really hoping for a good funny article about actual D&D and sex and geeks, not a rant from some hard up chick.
should have given it more than an hour... Aside from the lack of a 3rd click (which folks inside apple have admitted is on the way), it's actually real nice to use, ands you quickly learn how to use it and avoid invalid motions. Also, pinch/zoom is also rumored to be on the way in a driver update.
Personally though, I'm holding out for the iTablet with NFC chips. Simply put the 9" tablet near where you'd have a mouse, in proximity to a Mac with a USB receiver (or later native internal support), and it becomes a waccom tablet with multi-tough (and per rumor, an extention of the screen posibly including dock icons and several system controls!)
Try it out... Go to an Apple Store (or a BestBuy) and try one.
The static friction breaks easy when you are holding the mouse in a appropriate way, and fine movement is easy, but it holds its place well when you swipe. 2 finger swipes are done without letting go, so they're a non-issue. other swipes, where you remove your hand, require a very light touch. Initially, you may move the mouse occasionally, but the software does a good job interpreting a swipe vs a movement and leaves the cursor stationary, and with a few trys, you'll realize the conact required for reaction is very slight, and easy to do without disrupting the mouse's position. Even still, the static friction is enough the mouse rarely moves unless it's intended...
Since the mouse requires a physical left or right click, swipes are not interpreted as clicks. The only thing I'm waiting for is a software update to enable the "third" click (double click) and I'll buy one myself.
Wikipedia vs. walking through a museum -> museum Microwave vs. home cooked meal -> home cooking (at least in my house) Credit vs. Cash -> depends, I vote Debit Card (best of both worlds) e-pay vs. cash/check -> no more late bills, e-pay Direct Deposit vs. paycheck/cash -> direct deposit Digital camera vs. film -> except that it costs more, film, though at about 21MP i might start leaning the other way. Computer + printer vs. typewrite -> computer, no brainer. computer vs. inkwell -> though it has its aesthetics, are you kidding? computer. amazon.com vs. medieval bazzar -> amazon, (no pick pockets!)
would definetly have helped. Hard to tell sometimes amoung all the idiots who make similar comments in all seriousness.
It would going through the autocorrect settings on this PC and removing the "no one" to "noone" setting someone manually added prior to me sitting at this desk. Thanks for noting that....
gonna biuld your own roads? Do your own product saftey testing? Buy your kid's school books? Take time off work or pay for private school? generate your own electricity (you might pay for power now, but the gov't funds large portions of the grid it gets to you on)? Put out your own fires? House criminals in your garrage? Keep Korea for sending a nuclear bomb our way?
Look, you can do a lot yourself, but without taking care of the poor, they'll wander the streets and rob you. without govnerment we have no central systems, no regulation for phones, no saftey for products, no recourses for complaints, no courts to sue people in, and no officials helping control the chaos.
Yes, gov't wastes a lot of money, but it SAVES far more than it wastes by simply by existing. You can't build your own roads, you can't make your own clean water (not without having to defend your own well with guns anyway).
We need gov't. It wastes money, but it wastes less that 20 other nations equal to us in standing. More over, they're tiny, consolodated places easy to provide services to, and with far smaller military might (per capita). The fact we're 21st in the list with such a vast land mass and expensive to roll out services, complicated by people with higher than average salary (per world averages) and higher than average expectations, it;s a miracle we're not the worst on the list, ad we're on an IMPROVING trend of making it cheaper.
Actually, radical changes in technology (forcing LED backighting, or OLED displays) is not even necessary. Simply controlling MAX contrast and brightness we can solve half this issue(the settings they overinflate to rediculous levels - that are unwatchable and in many cases could cause permanant eye damage to watch at those settings - just to advertise a higher contrast ratio). Additionally, removing "ambilight" and other frils that make TV's "feel" bigger helps. Additionally, removing the internal speakers and "simulated surround" is not a bad idea (afterall, who buys a 47" TV and uses the built in speakers anyway?)
That said, I do think TVs is actually the wrong place to start. SO MANY other home appliances waste rediculous amounts of power. For staters: stereos, DVRs, game consoles, and more, often use similar if not identical power draw when idle as when on. My DVR for example (of which we have 2) uses 90w 24x7, and in fact turning it off is FORBIDDEN by the sattelite company. The XBox360 uses over 200w if I remember WHEN OFF!
I have 2 37" LCD TVs. 1 is a 3 year old westinghouse, uses 290w on (only 3 when off) and is 720p/1080i, and is made from 47lbs of materials. The other is an insignia from this year, uses only 200w (3 when off), and is full 1080p with higher brigthness and more powerful internal peakers, and only weighs 33lbs.
My 27" CRT TV only uses 180w by comarrison, and even my desktop LCD (22") uses nearly that. LCD is NOT generally lower power than CRT. in fact, often LCD (especially bigger sets) are far less energy efficint that projection TVs and older CRTs (though CRTs over 42" were real rare).
What IS lower power are LED backlit sets, and upcoming OLED TVs. Those use not only less power, are even lighter on materials.
Noone's going to subsidize it. noone's saying "you must replace your TV". We're not even saying you can't sell the current TVs (over 1,000 sets in the category ALREADY MEET the 2011 specs, and 300 meet the stricter 2013 specs!!!) Most current TVs to be replaced are not dramatically lower power than today's TVs, however, the state sees great disparity in current sets, having as much as 150w diffeences in power draw for TVs with the same base statistics. THAT has to change...
Why charge people differing rates based on overall use? Poor and low middle class people don't buy energy star for budget reasons as it is (the poor specifically rarely even buy new, let alone efficinent). This just raises their electric rates because they can't afford better tech. Its a completely regressive policy.
I prefer the opposite. Tax the manufacturer for each product sold in a product category that is not in the top 50% of the efficincy of products in it's class. For example, the EPA rates all 24cuft side-by-side refrigerators available. All devices are placed on a line, and the best and worst are rated, and the rest set at marks on the line. We find the unit at the 59% mark. For each 10% less efficient in terms of KWH/year based on typical user settings or use habits (for example, for a washing machine, assume 5 loads per week, for a water heater assume x thousand gallons, etc) charge a 2% tax. Items low on efficincy would cost 10% more to sell. Make this tax payable directly by the manufacturer, not the retailer or customer. Reset the range once every year. As a reward, any new products entering the market that are more efficient that the 95% mark previously set, get a 2% tax credit. Make something 30% more efficint and sell it, and that could mean a 6-8% tax break on each unit sold (which not only encourages the innovation but shifts the curve for next year).
Of course, instead of raising costs on consumers, (by passing through taxes), we could just regulate the industry, and encourage minimum energy efficincy standards based on products that have already acheived those marks, and discredit the current products that don't meet it making them regionally harder to sell and complicating logistics for the manufacturers who don;lt evolve. Since the products ALREADY EXIST, they clearly can't justify increasing prices du eto the regulation changes....
So we should tax alcohol more too, and gasoline, and wood products, and plastics, and anything else we want people to use less of? Taxes to control choices? But then, once the choice is made, and tax revenues fall, then we need more taxes, so we go find something else we don't like...
NO thanks for the bad idea!
TVs can CLEARLY be made at competitive prices using less electricity. There are simple adjustments and newer chips available. This is a regulation, no different than saftey riules for cars. A law can be passed to set up a state agency similar to the EPA, preferably in cooperation with agencies in other states and the EPA itself, to set product safety limits including power utilization and other environmental conditions. The manufacturers are constantly making new TVs, and other devices. The chips to make them energy efficient are available, and the settings to tune them appropriately should be the default. This simply levels the playing field to manufacturers, ensuring the better energy sipping components get used and wasteful features are left optional or external. It;s encouraging the progress that's already going on it's own by simply saying, "well, if you can make poorly tuned uncompetitive TVs that cost less, but then you can't sell them here, which means you need to make others to sell here which means to product lines, which likely costs more than a better tuned TV, so just do that." The market is competitive, the TVs already exist, so they'll sell the other ones in alternate states and slowly decomission those lines.
There are over 1,000 models currently meeting the certification that does not go into effect for more than a year, and 300+ meet it for the 2013 spec already. Do you SERIOUSLY think all TVs could not easily meet that standard by then? What this really does is it forces the LOW end TVs to also be energy efficient, and takes energy efficiency as a marketing tool (used to justify higher priced models) away. Now every TV meets the spec, so cheap TVs will have to as well, lowering the field.
Easy things to do: 1) change the MAX brigtness to a more reasonable level. (in order to show a higher contrast ratio, it is common practice today to have a TV with britness so high it is litterally damaging to the eyes to watch, and noone would reasonably use the setting anyway). 2) eliminate built in speakers on larger TVs. noone uses them anyway, or at least, i don't know anyone with a 42" set without a home theatre system of some kind (even if it's a cheap $200 all-in-one 5.1 system) 3) use an actually functional sleep system, instead of using 20w when idle. 4) eliminate things like "ambilight" and other lighting effect gimmicks that make TV's "feel" bigger. 6) use LED backlighting (which costs about the same anyway after other cost savings from simplified manufacturing and lowered material costs)
Yup, you chose to pay a LOT more over time for something you have not abandoned either, in leiu of risking a much smaller cancelation fee...
You have a 30 day window in your contract to cancel anyway. If it works for you for 30 days, you;re likely to keep it a year. If in year 2 you want to leave, it's a $150 fee (prorated even lower depending on the contract). I just paid $74 to end my wife's Verizon contract.
I be you;re paying at leats a $10 per month premium for your "choice." I'ts not like you CAN'T leave a contract, there's just a fee to do so, so why pay a LARGER fee over time?
Quitting and reapplying does NOT reset your count in the state. They covered their asses on that.
First, if you quit, you;re no elligible for a teaching contract from the same districy for several years.
Second, your tenure is a tracked state value. The number of years in service follow you (even from state to state in many cases).
Also, kickbacks like repayment of student loans are things offered only in certain calenday years (you had to graduate during that year).
Lastly, the perks and "incentives" for first time teachers only apply to non-certified teachers, and you have 3 years to GET certified or saccrifice the bonus (meaning repay it).
It simply is not economically better to reset 10 years of experience for a change in pay as you don;t qualify for it anyway...
I'd love to move to a state that pais teachers better, but unfortunately complications between family, my own employment, cost of living differences, complications selling and buying real estate, costs of the move itself, moving a child between schools, and the availability of teacher contracts (and required alternate state teaching credentials), means that is also not a financially sound devision.
The use tax field is intended to be an honest estimate, and you're only even required to put a value there if it exceeds some base amount ($250 i believe).
I don;t track everything, but fortunately, I only buy from a few select online retailers, many of which already collect sales tax, and it's real easy to log in and pull up a purchase history. (though for purposes beyond taxes, like waranty validation, I do keep every receipt for every non-disposable item I buy, and everything put on a credit card at all).
The first think most auditors will say is "where's your file of receipts for this account" and if you don;t have a file, trust me, you'll wish you did when they start using "estimates" instead of verifyable numbers...
When they audit you, you're required to provide them as part of the audit. You can CHOOSE to restrict them access to your credit card purchase records, but if you do, then you;re going to pay, a LOT, more at the end of a painful audit. If they feel the descrepency is enough to be a large amount, they can VERY easily get a court to summons you to produce it voluntarily which also places you in contempt of court for not doing so and then they get a warent....
State tax laws give the state revenue service wide leniency in tax evasion investigations...
They can't simply pull them up on their own, but once a formal audit starts, your refusal to provide easily obtainable electronic records by calling your bank and making a request is an obstruction of a state agency investigation, and laws are already on the book sto ensure you're advices that it would be very bad for you to do so.
Honestly, they don't need the receipts, they don't need to know WHAT you bough, only from who and what the total was...
giant mega company, or mom-n-pop is irrelevent. The point is the company has a footprint, employees, and pays taxes HERE. It could be a friggin international firm for all I care, if it;s down the street, it employs people from my town, which means a larche chunk of the revenue generated on each item bought in that location goes into the pockets of the people that work there, meaning that money gets AGAIN circulated back through the system again as THEY make purchases.
Yes, sales tax is regressive (if grocery, simply clotes, and household items are not excluded, as they are in many NewEngland states and others around the country). There's also the alternative minimum tax, and poverty levels to take into account as people below certain pay lavels can actually reclaim sales taxes on their anual taxes (or more importatly, qualify for government assistance, WIC, food stanps, etc). It's actually the middle claszs that's most hurt by sales tax, not the poor, and that's easily offset by sales tax exclusions on everyday items.
Simpler? no taking a chink right out the the paycheck, and another chunk from the proerty you live on is the simplest method by far. No daily incremental collections, no quarterly payments, no complex and expensive business practices to manage and computer systems that have to vary from state to state (and in this state include additionally varying county and local city sales taxes!)
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An independent contractor who has only 1 customer is by law considered an employee. If you're provided a desk, equipment of any kind, security access as an employee is (doesn't have to sign in, etc), is issued commands and job tasks by management, averages over 36 hours per week over a 3 month period or longer, has a dedicated manager, is expected to show up and work regular hours, etc, then the contractor is simply an employee who chooses to not accept HR to process their tax paperwork. In fact, in many states, it is ILLEGAL to have an "independent contractor" not be on the books if at any time their contract is open ended or not related to a specific task with a defined completion date. If he's there ofr a "contract job" where the job ends given a sety of conditions, and where he's the only one doing the work (not part of a team of other full time contractors), then he may very well be a contractor, but then he's got the power to negotiate or walk away as well, and should have a business contract with them, and not have filled out an employment application...
I had an employer try to pull this BS in CT. He thought it would be a great idea to fire us all, hire us back at a 10% pay raise, but save all the benefits, vacation, Social security and HR costs, etc. he saved about $300/week per each of us, and we got $50-100 more... Come tax time, we found out the hard way that just because an employer doesn't pay your matching SS costs and medicare, that does NOT mean it does not have to get paid... i had a $4K tax debt to deal with under this arrangement.
We spoke to a lawyer, and the state department of labor, and the guy got fined big time, and we each got the back pay X3, our tax debt reassigned to his firm, and 10% of what they took out of his ass for reporting him. During the process, he terminated us all instantly, so we also got compensation for unlawful termination and loss of work pay (plus unemployment on top). They also found out he'd been doing this for YEARS in cycles, and got him for a few hundred grand in unpaid taxes, and last I heard he was still serving a 9 year prison sentence for tax evasion (he tried to move all the money and the house to relative's accounts so they could not put leans on it when he refused to pay up). They took everything he had, business home and cars.
Contractors by definition can not be on salary. If you;re buddy is only paid 40 hours as a contractor, he needs to send them a bill and threaten to send a copy to the labor board and the attorney general of the state. Have him tell them he wants time and a half back pay, plus time and a half vacation compensation, plus $300 per payroll period in leiu of stiffer fines from the government, and give them a copy of the FLSA sections refering to the definitions of contractor and employee.
You've not been a fireman have you...
They're 1 day on, 2 days off in most places first of all, for full time firemen (mostly limited to drivers of rigs and some specialists, expect in big cities).
They are NOT provided food. They community cook in most houses, all chipping in for dinner and sharing cooking and cleaning duties. They're also not paid for time eating meals if they're permitted to leave the house to get them (or to run errands).
Most have families, and I can assure you, sleeping in a strange bed 1 night in 3, away from wife and kids is something that should be compensated for much more highly.
I know many good men who worked for a fire district in our state. They had to sue the county for back pay and compensation for a miriad of payroll violations. 1) pay must be a 14 day period for firemen (7 for almost everyone else), yet they were only counting overtime on a rolling 28 day period, which shorted them an average of 3 hours a week if I remomber. 2) they actually worked 25.5 hours on shift, not 24, but somehow the difference was missed in their contract. 3) they were not paid for meetings. 4) they could not leave the firehouse except as a group in the appropriate fire trucks, yet were not paid for mael time on the closk. 5) they were not paid comp time appropriately when they did not get 5 hours uninterupted sleep. 6) they were not given their vacation allotments properly. (only earned 12 hours per pay period, but overtime compensation did not make adjustments to this). The average 5 year man got over $15K in back bay benefits out of the lawsuit, and the county paid over a million in one-time damages, and incurred a 20% increase in house costs due to the ongoing increased wages (what they should have been payong all along, but never budgeted for).
No need for a union. Simply:
1) get written confirmation from your boss you are not elligible for overtime and on-call pay. Show him a copy of the FLSA related to on-call work and have them explain why they fee it does not apply to your position.
2) work as long as you feel you'de like to for that firm.
3) at some point later, present a copy of the FLSA 29 CFR 17 defining on-call pay requirements, having this notorized by a lawyer is nice too. Even an anonymous call to the labor board in your state may also work so you can remain anonymous and reap the benefits without job loss.
4) take large settlement check for all logged time (at time and a half at least, plus additional compensation as best as you can negotiate).
4a) if company offers your continued employment, great, if not, you have a real nice paycheck, plus back pay
4b) if check not offered, sue, you'll be due at least 3 times the back pay at time and a half, plus all your legal fees. It's a cut and dry case, you'll be compensated additionally for time lost, and likely will never appear in court.
Here's the conditions outlined in the FLSA regarding who should be paid for on-call waiting time (on call actual time on a call helping someone is assumed you'll be paid for, this is the "sitting around" time you should also be paid for...):
--Geography. How far can an on-call worker stray from the jobsite? The more restricted he or she is, the more likely it is that on-call time is compensable. Before cell phones and pagers, on-call people often had to be at home, by the phone. Now they can be anywhere, so the issue is less clear. That often brings it down to a matter of
--Response Time. How long a time do you allow for on-call people to respond? That frequently spells how far away they can be. If you demand the person be on-site in 10 minutes, says Jorgensen, the time is likely to be compensable. If it’s 60 minutes, he believes the opposite is true.
--Call Frequency. How often is the person actually called? In one court case, Jorgensen reports, an employee called three to five times a day was ruled to be working and had to be paid. In another case, one called six times in a year was not deemed so.
--Uniqueness. A fourth factor relates to how many of your workers can do the needed work. If there’s a pool of employees available, and employees can trade off the on-call responsibility, there’s less evidence that any one of them is restricted personally.
--Alcohol restrictions. If the company requires you to remain sober during on-call time, likely you qualify for pay during the entire time.
Other things that may factor in regionally or at the state level:
- additional compensation for interrupted meals, including at the least pay for the intire time of the meal plus the interruption, and potentially fair compensation for the cost of the meal.
- minimum 5 hours uninterupted rest clause. Get woken up at 3AM after going to sleep at 11PM. Have to be at work at 8AM next day, so you get up at 5:30. You did not get 5 hours uninterupted, so you must be paid the ENTIRE 8 HOURS OF SLEEP as if you were awake/
- no alternate compensation: can't be compensated with comp time, only payroll. In states where comp-time is approved comensation for on-call work, that must be at 150% the comp rate (equiv of overtime compensation pay). Further, an employer in most states can not make you leave early because you worked late the night before, nor cut your hours to below your average work week in order to avoid overtime.
- OSHA and other FLSA regulations on max time allowable at work in a 24 hour period (varies by job title as well, for instance emergency worker, driver, etc).
I've worked On-Call shifts with a number of companies before.
Here's the deal:
The FLSA [Fair Labor Standards Act] regulations provide that "[a]n employee who is required to remain on call on the employer's premises or so close thereto that he cannot use the time effectively for his own purposes" is considered to be "working." 29 C.F.R. [section] 785.17
It is against the law for a on-call person to be paid salary. They are non-exempt employees by definition. Any time spent fulfilling required job duties outside of the office must be compensated. Overtime pay scales may or may not apply by job description.
Since a home system, paid for at least in part by an employer, including compensated phone/internet bills and job requirements to maintain a home computer for work purposes (or a provided corporate computer for use at home, including rotated on-call hardware shared by several people) is an extension of the office and the duties of the job, that home system is essentially ruled by the courts to BE the office when on-call. Anytime an employer requires an on-call person to remain in their home, or in proximity to a computer system and to carry and answer a phone routed by the company at specific hours, then that person, under the FLSA, is in fact WORKING. The rate they're paid for that time spent "waiting" for a call may be billed at varying rates, but generally not less than 50% of regular pay, and any time actually on a call would be bileld at the standard rate for that employee (or overtime rate if it applies). Many companies pay a base "convenience" wage to people who are on call but take no calls during that time.
The Supreme Court, in previous rulings, has also concurred. If you are bound to a location, unable to leave and persue personal activities (say, go to a movie, go out to dinner across town, play video games online, go shopping at something other than a local grocery store, etc), or are mandated to be at a computer to handle calls within X minutes of a notice of an alert (the "you can do whatever you want, but you only have 30 minutes to answer a page" idea), then you are essentially work bound, and not free to use your time at your own lesiure. For example, if while on-call, you could go spend a weekend at your parents, so long as you answer calls per company policy, and meet SLAs for handling issues, they you are only required to be paid while actually working, but if that company required you to stay "within 15 minutes of a connected computer at all times while on-call" then you are work bound, and must be compensated at at least a base acceptible rate during that time, including time-and-a-half as mandated for hours over 40.
For example, at one of my employers, all i was required to do was return a paged call within 30 minutes. once the call was returned, it took about 5 minutes to determine what the issue was, but we had a 4 hour response SLA, so you could tell a customer, "I'm on call, and not at home, I'll call you back in 2 hours..." and that was acceptible. We were only paid for time actually logged on calls (rounded to the nearest hour). At another job, The 1 week a month you were on call, you were expected to keep a quiet household, be at home at all times aside from quick errands, and if you got a call, it had to be answered immediately, and you had to be logged in within 20 minutes of the call. We were paid 50% time for all hours "on call" except meals and sleeping and 100% time on calls (and time and a half as it applied only to time on calls).
Further, in many states (including this one), even if only billable when actually on a call, it is illegal to be paid for less than 3 hours in any 24 hour period, regardless of the number of hours worked. It's also illegal to be compensated for less than 1 hour for any block of time spent working that is more than 1 hour apart from another billable hour. For example: on Sunday, you get a call at 10AM that lasts 30 minutes. You get another call at 3PM that lasts only 15 minutes. They have to pay yo
1) universal default applies not to only if you're late on a payement to them, but if you're late on a payment to ANYONE ELSE, including completely unrelated companies, even including if that late payment showed up on your credit report in error due to a processing delay or computer glitch.
2) Credit us? unlikely. Errors on your credit report? 80% of americans will have at least 1 falsely reported itewms on their credit report in roughly a 3 year rolling term. Also, universal default can trigger simply for APPLYING for more credit from someone else... (like tryinfg to buy a new car).
3) credit card company have a misbilling, incorrectly calculate interest based on grace periods, add "protection services" to your account, change your interest rate, add an annual fee, yea, they do that... Ive had a few make the corrections. Others I have to cancel and leave, but that means getting another card to replace it. Do that just 2-3 times a year and you're knocking 60-100 points of your mean beacon score. That's gonna cost you hundreds on a car loan or thousands on a house next time you go to finance something. It is NOT worth the risk.
Besides, debit is free, and, for every $40K i run through the card (every 7 mopnths on my current pace), I get a $100 gift card to a store of my choice.
Walkig the bridge? you get a 25 day grace poriod on purchases. You buy something, 2 days later a bill posts and they conveniently leave that off. Post office send the bill low class mail so it takes a good week to get to you, you open it, pay it immediately, but you missed a few transactions that were not posted on that bill. Next month, bam, finance charges... They'll watch your bill schedule of automatic payments against the card, and rest you billing cycle so the largest single 2 business day loop lands on the cycle closing dates, and they'll get tyhat interest every month unless you manually go online and make multiple payements every month (if they offer such a system, only 2 of my 4 cards do).
1: all the comparrisons in the article were apples/oranges...
2: depejnds on your definition of cooking. Lets defin this more as "classic home cooking" aka, from scratch... Again, fine print assumes a good cook!
3: WHAT!?! Debit card is FREE. Credit card incurs at leats a yearly fee, plus interest if you don'y pay during grace period in full. Also, my debit card pays me about $100 every 6-9 months since I get $100 in gift cards for every 40K in transactions i run through it (and since I include 2 mortgages, 3 car payments, my insurance deductible, and every bill i have, and all the purchases we make, that goes quick).
I have 4 credit cards, the only time i use them is for truly interest free, and as a backup in emergencies (extended unemployment, major repair, etc) The rewards points are insufficint to make the trouble of manual payment tracking worth it (since the grace period if 25 days, but only a fraction of transdactions show up on the bill during that period, so sending 2-3 checks to them each month is required to avoid finance charges completely).
Max withdrawl from my account via debit transactions is $1,000. Only my mortgage company and car loan have exemptions to that, or anytime i call in and personally authorize excess charges.
I keep several grand in checking, and a few more in savings, so a 2-3 day issue if I didn't catch it myself in time (especially easier since I've actually had my bank call me to question transactions on the fly), is not a big deal. I have once had an issue where multiple holds against my account caused an issue, but a call to the 24/7 bank line solved it and they unlocked purchasing power based on my account history and a sim-ple explanation.
1) i get reward points. About $100 return for every 40K run through the card, but since I run virtually every payemnt I make through it (including 2 mortgages), that adds up quick.
2) 1 month savings interest on the $2-3K you might roll through in routine spending defered 25 days is not enough to bother with.
3) can't argue that one
4) I've disputed numerous debit card charges (mostly double charging, but someone did get my card number at one point and make a few internet purchases). Money was back in my account in hours. Since the card has a max purchase per 24 hours with the exception of pre-approval for purchases rung up by my mortgage company (or my own call-in authorizations) it's pretty hard to cause my bank account damage, and any damage would be reversed same day anyway.
cheaper only if it's interest free and no yearly fees...
Pro camera, $2,000 price tag, sure... 8MP is fine for basic shots, 12MP is fine for high qaulity and close ups, things you might blow up bigger... The issue is the that only high SPEED low noise sensors are all in cameras I can't come close to affording.
8MP sensors compared, including the CPU doing image capture and recod behind it, there's no comparrison to film yet unless you can afford true pro qaulity stuff, or don;t do any high speed or low light motion shots.
um, yea, this has very little to do with D&D, and seems to be a rant from some chick about "role playing" and sex, and how though D&D is kinda cool, role playing that kind of character and relationships should not be mixed. Also seems to be about her getting hit on in book and comic book stores...
dull and off topic.
I was really hoping for a good funny article about actual D&D and sex and geeks, not a rant from some hard up chick.
should have given it more than an hour... Aside from the lack of a 3rd click (which folks inside apple have admitted is on the way), it's actually real nice to use, ands you quickly learn how to use it and avoid invalid motions. Also, pinch/zoom is also rumored to be on the way in a driver update.
Personally though, I'm holding out for the iTablet with NFC chips. Simply put the 9" tablet near where you'd have a mouse, in proximity to a Mac with a USB receiver (or later native internal support), and it becomes a waccom tablet with multi-tough (and per rumor, an extention of the screen posibly including dock icons and several system controls!)
Try it out... Go to an Apple Store (or a BestBuy) and try one.
The static friction breaks easy when you are holding the mouse in a appropriate way, and fine movement is easy, but it holds its place well when you swipe. 2 finger swipes are done without letting go, so they're a non-issue. other swipes, where you remove your hand, require a very light touch. Initially, you may move the mouse occasionally, but the software does a good job interpreting a swipe vs a movement and leaves the cursor stationary, and with a few trys, you'll realize the conact required for reaction is very slight, and easy to do without disrupting the mouse's position. Even still, the static friction is enough the mouse rarely moves unless it's intended...
Since the mouse requires a physical left or right click, swipes are not interpreted as clicks. The only thing I'm waiting for is a software update to enable the "third" click (double click) and I'll buy one myself.
Wikipedia vs. walking through a museum -> museum
Microwave vs. home cooked meal -> home cooking (at least in my house)
Credit vs. Cash -> depends, I vote Debit Card (best of both worlds)
e-pay vs. cash/check -> no more late bills, e-pay
Direct Deposit vs. paycheck/cash -> direct deposit
Digital camera vs. film -> except that it costs more, film, though at about 21MP i might start leaning the other way.
Computer + printer vs. typewrite -> computer, no brainer.
computer vs. inkwell -> though it has its aesthetics, are you kidding? computer.
amazon.com vs. medieval bazzar -> amazon, (no pick pockets!)
would definetly have helped. Hard to tell sometimes amoung all the idiots who make similar comments in all seriousness.
It would going through the autocorrect settings on this PC and removing the "no one" to "noone" setting someone manually added prior to me sitting at this desk. Thanks for noting that....
gonna biuld your own roads? Do your own product saftey testing? Buy your kid's school books? Take time off work or pay for private school? generate your own electricity (you might pay for power now, but the gov't funds large portions of the grid it gets to you on)? Put out your own fires? House criminals in your garrage? Keep Korea for sending a nuclear bomb our way?
Look, you can do a lot yourself, but without taking care of the poor, they'll wander the streets and rob you. without govnerment we have no central systems, no regulation for phones, no saftey for products, no recourses for complaints, no courts to sue people in, and no officials helping control the chaos.
Yes, gov't wastes a lot of money, but it SAVES far more than it wastes by simply by existing. You can't build your own roads, you can't make your own clean water (not without having to defend your own well with guns anyway).
We need gov't. It wastes money, but it wastes less that 20 other nations equal to us in standing. More over, they're tiny, consolodated places easy to provide services to, and with far smaller military might (per capita). The fact we're 21st in the list with such a vast land mass and expensive to roll out services, complicated by people with higher than average salary (per world averages) and higher than average expectations, it;s a miracle we're not the worst on the list, ad we're on an IMPROVING trend of making it cheaper.
Actually, radical changes in technology (forcing LED backighting, or OLED displays) is not even necessary. Simply controlling MAX contrast and brightness we can solve half this issue(the settings they overinflate to rediculous levels - that are unwatchable and in many cases could cause permanant eye damage to watch at those settings - just to advertise a higher contrast ratio). Additionally, removing "ambilight" and other frils that make TV's "feel" bigger helps. Additionally, removing the internal speakers and "simulated surround" is not a bad idea (afterall, who buys a 47" TV and uses the built in speakers anyway?)
That said, I do think TVs is actually the wrong place to start. SO MANY other home appliances waste rediculous amounts of power. For staters: stereos, DVRs, game consoles, and more, often use similar if not identical power draw when idle as when on. My DVR for example (of which we have 2) uses 90w 24x7, and in fact turning it off is FORBIDDEN by the sattelite company. The XBox360 uses over 200w if I remember WHEN OFF!
I have 2 37" LCD TVs. 1 is a 3 year old westinghouse, uses 290w on (only 3 when off) and is 720p/1080i, and is made from 47lbs of materials. The other is an insignia from this year, uses only 200w (3 when off), and is full 1080p with higher brigthness and more powerful internal peakers, and only weighs 33lbs.
My 27" CRT TV only uses 180w by comarrison, and even my desktop LCD (22") uses nearly that. LCD is NOT generally lower power than CRT. in fact, often LCD (especially bigger sets) are far less energy efficint that projection TVs and older CRTs (though CRTs over 42" were real rare).
What IS lower power are LED backlit sets, and upcoming OLED TVs. Those use not only less power, are even lighter on materials.
Noone's going to subsidize it. noone's saying "you must replace your TV". We're not even saying you can't sell the current TVs (over 1,000 sets in the category ALREADY MEET the 2011 specs, and 300 meet the stricter 2013 specs!!!) Most current TVs to be replaced are not dramatically lower power than today's TVs, however, the state sees great disparity in current sets, having as much as 150w diffeences in power draw for TVs with the same base statistics. THAT has to change...
Why charge people differing rates based on overall use? Poor and low middle class people don't buy energy star for budget reasons as it is (the poor specifically rarely even buy new, let alone efficinent). This just raises their electric rates because they can't afford better tech. Its a completely regressive policy.
I prefer the opposite. Tax the manufacturer for each product sold in a product category that is not in the top 50% of the efficincy of products in it's class. For example, the EPA rates all 24cuft side-by-side refrigerators available. All devices are placed on a line, and the best and worst are rated, and the rest set at marks on the line. We find the unit at the 59% mark. For each 10% less efficient in terms of KWH/year based on typical user settings or use habits (for example, for a washing machine, assume 5 loads per week, for a water heater assume x thousand gallons, etc) charge a 2% tax. Items low on efficincy would cost 10% more to sell. Make this tax payable directly by the manufacturer, not the retailer or customer. Reset the range once every year. As a reward, any new products entering the market that are more efficient that the 95% mark previously set, get a 2% tax credit. Make something 30% more efficint and sell it, and that could mean a 6-8% tax break on each unit sold (which not only encourages the innovation but shifts the curve for next year).
Of course, instead of raising costs on consumers, (by passing through taxes), we could just regulate the industry, and encourage minimum energy efficincy standards based on products that have already acheived those marks, and discredit the current products that don't meet it making them regionally harder to sell and complicating logistics for the manufacturers who don;lt evolve. Since the products ALREADY EXIST, they clearly can't justify increasing prices du eto the regulation changes....
So we should tax alcohol more too, and gasoline, and wood products, and plastics, and anything else we want people to use less of? Taxes to control choices? But then, once the choice is made, and tax revenues fall, then we need more taxes, so we go find something else we don't like...
NO thanks for the bad idea!
TVs can CLEARLY be made at competitive prices using less electricity. There are simple adjustments and newer chips available. This is a regulation, no different than saftey riules for cars. A law can be passed to set up a state agency similar to the EPA, preferably in cooperation with agencies in other states and the EPA itself, to set product safety limits including power utilization and other environmental conditions. The manufacturers are constantly making new TVs, and other devices. The chips to make them energy efficient are available, and the settings to tune them appropriately should be the default. This simply levels the playing field to manufacturers, ensuring the better energy sipping components get used and wasteful features are left optional or external. It;s encouraging the progress that's already going on it's own by simply saying, "well, if you can make poorly tuned uncompetitive TVs that cost less, but then you can't sell them here, which means you need to make others to sell here which means to product lines, which likely costs more than a better tuned TV, so just do that." The market is competitive, the TVs already exist, so they'll sell the other ones in alternate states and slowly decomission those lines.
There are over 1,000 models currently meeting the certification that does not go into effect for more than a year, and 300+ meet it for the 2013 spec already. Do you SERIOUSLY think all TVs could not easily meet that standard by then? What this really does is it forces the LOW end TVs to also be energy efficient, and takes energy efficiency as a marketing tool (used to justify higher priced models) away. Now every TV meets the spec, so cheap TVs will have to as well, lowering the field.
Easy things to do:
1) change the MAX brigtness to a more reasonable level. (in order to show a higher contrast ratio, it is common practice today to have a TV with britness so high it is litterally damaging to the eyes to watch, and noone would reasonably use the setting anyway).
2) eliminate built in speakers on larger TVs. noone uses them anyway, or at least, i don't know anyone with a 42" set without a home theatre system of some kind (even if it's a cheap $200 all-in-one 5.1 system)
3) use an actually functional sleep system, instead of using 20w when idle.
4) eliminate things like "ambilight" and other lighting effect gimmicks that make TV's "feel" bigger.
6) use LED backlighting (which costs about the same anyway after other cost savings from simplified manufacturing and lowered material costs)
Yup, you chose to pay a LOT more over time for something you have not abandoned either, in leiu of risking a much smaller cancelation fee...
You have a 30 day window in your contract to cancel anyway. If it works for you for 30 days, you;re likely to keep it a year. If in year 2 you want to leave, it's a $150 fee (prorated even lower depending on the contract). I just paid $74 to end my wife's Verizon contract.
I be you;re paying at leats a $10 per month premium for your "choice." I'ts not like you CAN'T leave a contract, there's just a fee to do so, so why pay a LARGER fee over time?
Quitting and reapplying does NOT reset your count in the state. They covered their asses on that.
First, if you quit, you;re no elligible for a teaching contract from the same districy for several years.
Second, your tenure is a tracked state value. The number of years in service follow you (even from state to state in many cases).
Also, kickbacks like repayment of student loans are things offered only in certain calenday years (you had to graduate during that year).
Lastly, the perks and "incentives" for first time teachers only apply to non-certified teachers, and you have 3 years to GET certified or saccrifice the bonus (meaning repay it).
It simply is not economically better to reset 10 years of experience for a change in pay as you don;t qualify for it anyway...
I'd love to move to a state that pais teachers better, but unfortunately complications between family, my own employment, cost of living differences, complications selling and buying real estate, costs of the move itself, moving a child between schools, and the availability of teacher contracts (and required alternate state teaching credentials), means that is also not a financially sound devision.
We're not idiots, we're just fucked.
The use tax field is intended to be an honest estimate, and you're only even required to put a value there if it exceeds some base amount ($250 i believe).
I don;t track everything, but fortunately, I only buy from a few select online retailers, many of which already collect sales tax, and it's real easy to log in and pull up a purchase history. (though for purposes beyond taxes, like waranty validation, I do keep every receipt for every non-disposable item I buy, and everything put on a credit card at all).
The first think most auditors will say is "where's your file of receipts for this account" and if you don;t have a file, trust me, you'll wish you did when they start using "estimates" instead of verifyable numbers...
When they audit you, you're required to provide them as part of the audit. You can CHOOSE to restrict them access to your credit card purchase records, but if you do, then you;re going to pay, a LOT, more at the end of a painful audit. If they feel the descrepency is enough to be a large amount, they can VERY easily get a court to summons you to produce it voluntarily which also places you in contempt of court for not doing so and then they get a warent....
State tax laws give the state revenue service wide leniency in tax evasion investigations...
They can't simply pull them up on their own, but once a formal audit starts, your refusal to provide easily obtainable electronic records by calling your bank and making a request is an obstruction of a state agency investigation, and laws are already on the book sto ensure you're advices that it would be very bad for you to do so.
Honestly, they don't need the receipts, they don't need to know WHAT you bough, only from who and what the total was...
giant mega company, or mom-n-pop is irrelevent. The point is the company has a footprint, employees, and pays taxes HERE. It could be a friggin international firm for all I care, if it;s down the street, it employs people from my town, which means a larche chunk of the revenue generated on each item bought in that location goes into the pockets of the people that work there, meaning that money gets AGAIN circulated back through the system again as THEY make purchases.
Yes, sales tax is regressive (if grocery, simply clotes, and household items are not excluded, as they are in many NewEngland states and others around the country). There's also the alternative minimum tax, and poverty levels to take into account as people below certain pay lavels can actually reclaim sales taxes on their anual taxes (or more importatly, qualify for government assistance, WIC, food stanps, etc). It's actually the middle claszs that's most hurt by sales tax, not the poor, and that's easily offset by sales tax exclusions on everyday items.
Simpler? no taking a chink right out the the paycheck, and another chunk from the proerty you live on is the simplest method by far. No daily incremental collections, no quarterly payments, no complex and expensive business practices to manage and computer systems that have to vary from state to state (and in this state include additionally varying county and local city sales taxes!)