Originally Posted by patentcad

The degree to which the people running the State of NY are complete and utter friggin imbeciles can never be overstated.

Trust me on this. Another $200+ assessment to NY Sales Tax today. The problem is they are absolutely correct. The part they don't seem to get is that when the collection of a tax is largely dependent upon taxpayer voluntary compliance, pissing off those payees with unreasonable penalties is probably a bad idea, since it would be so easy to stop collecting said tax, and still remain in full compliance with the law. Let alone those who just stop complying, good luck catching all of them. Not that I would ever actually contemplate such an illegal move.

Maybe they should ask the friggin Russians about what happens when a tax system has no voluntary compliance. It's hard to run a government without money. And there aren't enough auditors on the planet to compensate when that happens.

By the way, this recent error does appear to have triggered an automatic audit of 10+ years of quarterly sales tax returns. They found one $17 error over those 40+ returns. They billed me for that too. Friggin aholes that they are.