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Hey Julie B. … Heard the radio advertisement this morning first thing along with first cup of coffee. They were, as you say, announcing the multi-millions of dollars that the “new online sellers tax enforcement” was going to bring to the state. Wonder if they are already figuring out what to spend it own. Another radio station was saying they were going to target the “larger, higher dollar items” like furniture, appliances and home remodeling products first but no mention of the size of the seller.
Think they are figruing they want the 6.5 or whatever percetage of a $2 to $4,000 dollar sale first as opposed to a $25 dollar sale of a used brass candle holder :-).
Since we are resellers and incoporated and have a Federal ID number and a Tax Exempt Certificate can we start using it to be exempt from paying Sales Tax when we buy stuff from others online. It may help save us the tax percentage as a buyer? And wonder if we will start getting buyers from us, who are resellers giving us their tax ID exempt certificates and if we will have to keep those on file? As you say, tons of details to go through.
Our daughter just relocated back to Atlanta from Orlando due to a nice promotion and will be settling more over your way. She handles the Mercedes Benz and Porsche accounts and will need to be close to the corporate offices. She will probably be looking up GA 400 and I-75 North of Alpharetta. I know you are further up but she will have to use those routes to commute down to I-285 / Dunwoody area. Boy, that is an interesting commute. Just for information for her, how long does it take you to reach the I-285 loop?
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
Oh I definetly agree that many of the bigger stores will just hire a few more people aor add a dept. and Bingo it is done. And they will keep growing, but those bigger companies do not buy unpolished, dirty, rusty 50 year old oil lamps, tarnishing silver plate, art glass vases, old erector sets, 50 year old post cards and sell them.
I know a bunch of sellers who do not even know what SEO is, can’t write formulas for spread sheets, write html code or know what a relational datbase is or what and how it works. Those folks will just have another wall – hurdle for them to climb. Then the others who are about at their limits, stretched too thin, the “Peter’s Principle” is just about to get them and this will be the final straw and just give up. It will be a lot of those 17% sellers you guys talk about that I would hope thin out to some degree.
But yes you are right, those equipped for fast commerce will adapt in a heartbeat and expand thus your e”evem nore competition” will apply, I just hope they don’t stop buying solidered tin decor from China and start showing up at our estate sales and auctions. Can’t see a Wayfare buyer sitting next to us at last weeks auction. LOL.. funny π
Anyway you are correct within those guidelines.
Love the phrase, ..”those that survive will thrive”. Getting into the weeds, details, numbers, ratios, tax forms, legit stuff is not for the broad brush sellers. Many of the old antique people keep their receivables in their left pocket and their payables in their right. Even many corporate guys loved guys like you and I who crucnched the numbers or were the minute detailed operations guys with the clipboard and stop watch.
Yep those of us on sixBit, WonderLister et. al will just automate the whole process and .. “keep on truckin”!
Point about Bonanza.. I think I may be with Ryanne on deleting all the stuff off Bonanza. It is not even close to being synched with Ebay and I am now getting a bunch of emails about buying different tiers or levels of tools for the Bonanza store. You want more exposure, then pay us more. I haven’t had a Bonanza Sale since fall of last year. If it is synched with Ebay and all items are present and accounted for then why pay them anything extra.
I bet if you give a pencil and paper to random people and tell them you will give them $10 for every online buyers platform they can think of, most would not even list Bonanza or TrueGether as a shopping channel-platform. But just my opinion.
And maybe the hidden silver lining is that many of the smaller sellers may not licenses or FEIN Tax numbers or their state numbers which will force many to just drop out on the online selling game. Then those of us who are legit or Incoporated, or LLC’s, Sole Props, will have less competition, less sellers placing extremely low prices and the rest of us will benefit somehow.
And if as SC Joe says, a big if, they keep it simple somehow then maybe be easier.
Julie B. I finally got the state of GA. to put me onto only filing Sales Tax within GA. once a year [End of Dec. each year]. It took six years of having to file monthly and doing the county, region thing. Most of the time it was zero sales anyway, but still a pain. Now that I only have to file yearly, they only ask for the years total sales, then the “total” sales in GA and I do one check to them for one amount. When I asked my CPA he said only if we were ver audited, then maybe, but only maybe they would ask for a breakdown, but with our software only keeping state totals, he said he would give them that number and if they wanted more, he would tell them to have at it. But in his whole years of experience he said he has never seen an auditor request the county breakdown. But, still now that we only do it once a year, it is one total amount of sales times the state tax rate.
He also said that the total GA sales was almost insignificant in dollar amounts. And by paying with the higher percentage tax rate that in the counties or areas where the rate is lower they would proberly owe me money back, but again just small dollar amounts.
mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art
T-Satt sent u a PM. Chk ur email or junk mail.
Thanks,
mike at MDC GalleriesCool. Never heard that story but great.
mike at MDCGFA
Happy Birthday Ryanne and Happy belated Birthday to Jay. [we have been out of pocket for 3 plus weeks].
Ryanne, [u may be too young to know this], but 39 was the age that Jack Benny always stated. At this point he never went any higher. It became almost a trade mark statement for him.
For Jay [the numbers guy], I have bad news for you. I hate to be the bearer of bad news and the glass is half empty guy, but you like the numbers so here is a few truthisms.
At 45, if u calculate 90 +/- years of life these days, you are at the peak. I want to be the first to welcome you to the down side of the slope. Forget all the sayings, like I am only as old as I feel, etc, etc. From this point on, you will have less time to live than you have already lived, you will get slower in motion, slower in thinking, able to lift less, able to do less, your bones turn from rubber whereby you bounce to brittle whereby you break, you will ache more, sleep less, do bedroom stuff less, your skin starts to sag more, facial lines become deeper, bags increase in size and quantity, the whites of your eyes start to turn yellower, hair lines start receding, dark color of your hair starts to be peppered with white areas, joints begin to ache, stuff accumulates, sclothes seem to shrink for some reason, the scale seems to be always out of calibration and the needle always goes way too high, belts start to get shorter and, and.. so Jay Welcome to the backside of the slope!!!!! LOL HaHa π π
Ryanne, how about a game of tennis or a long jog!! π
Just a joke guys… At 67 and 69 we just keep going the best we can each day and try to enjoy our Vintage Buying and Selling life.
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta π
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This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
Ditto. Just keep the ball moving forward.
Liz, we follow pretty much what you outlined. Even have a short blurb about it that we cut and paste to the buyer saying we noticed two purchases and will combine if the objects and sizes make sense. If not then they will arrive in separate boxes. Then a short sentence or two that shows them how to request a combined shipment invoice if they so desire.
Mike at MDCG in Atl.
Pretty much the same for us, only I had moved away from corp. some time earlier, then did s remodeling business on my own but 2008 put that down. So started the Ebay thing with a neighbors stash of items while my wife still worked as a dental assistant for a few years. I got the Ebay going but found Scavengerlife a few years after I started, but early in Jay and Ryanne’s starting SL when they were back with Mikey and Wendy.
I think I recall SL having a dozen or so people that watched and no call ins in those days as well as Jay asking on several podcasts “Come on people, post something on the Blog and ask questions”. Now.. have plenty of things to talk about and many SL members who reply.
But glad i found SL and learned week by week from all the experiences shared here on SL. Also funny to listen to the old podcasts as compared to now. J&R have changed their minds on some things, their approach has changed and Ebay and policies have changed, but it all falls into the category of evolution. SL has evolved, the members posts have evolved, issues, how to handle them and the Ebay platform all have evolved. SL gives me atleast a more of a stable platform whereby topics can be discussed in a rational [most of the time LOL] manner and just worked out to a solution – conclusion that helps us function, grow and succeed. Not a lot of ranting and lunacy here.
Mike at MDCG in ATL
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This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by
MDC Galleries & Fine Art.
Double amen!
RTWV: Same for me as T-Satt on the hours. T-Satt and I have a similiar background in the corporate numbers and operations arena.
As salaried and head officer it was 24/7 for me for years. I usually worked about 2 years for year year of time span. My employees worked 2080 hours, me well over 4,000 hours per year. But I did get paid the big bucks and percentages of profit bonuses. But at some point it just no longer mattered. Time to get off the merry go round. Wife was worried it would kill me eventually and I couldn’t argue. Yes things got much tigther but we still make it, just with a lot less, which is OK. Just getting a little extra sleep every morning is very satisfying. π
mike at MDCG in ATL
Julie B: I side with Adventure E here. Do a slow throttle down. Work the work side numbers as a gradual back off. We all know that corp. will try the hard court press but hard to push a player who has a minor injury. So to speak. So come up with your own “minor injury” that allows you to start the back down or roll back.
Then work those extra hours on your own business. Yes it will still mean 60 hrs. maybe even 90 hours a week, but you will be at home, in place with the family and can do it own your own schedule.
And as AdvenE says you can get away with your resume intact, a good reference if you need it.
Now according to new trends, a resume should only show your last 10 years of work experience [give or take what and where you read], but as you put distance between you and this last job, at some point down the road, it may be the only thing you have listed on your resume and you want it to be an OK reference. In my case my resume would be blank based on the 10 year rule of thumb, despite running multi-million dollar companies as Exceutive COO, been own my own long enough for a new company not to care what I did 15 years ago. But in my case I moved into retirement. HaHa LOL.
In your case, not knowing your age, you need to look ahead and think if you would ever need to re-enter the work force [corp. or not] and think how your resume and a background check would go. If you are older, then do as AdvenE suggest, get everything paid off, back down slowly and if the boss then decides to “let you go” for whatever reason you can also collect unemployment insurance for a period of months. Have your online selling platforms hitting on all cyclinders, then just “Do It” for the remainder of your life.
I have no idea what my resume looks like now, when it was last updated, or what it even says any longer and don’t care.
We all know it is a big, big, step.. and wish you all the luck..
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
Tina: T-Satt uses SixBit because he basically likes the way it looks on his screen. I use WonderLister because it costs less. Both owners came from the Blackthorn Team and were Ebay employees for years and also worked on the Ebay Turbo lister program before Ebay stopped supporting and writing code for it.
John and Chavi were former project partners. John owns SB and Chavi WL. Both of these companies came about because they wanted to build and market a platform that was better than Turbo lister and Blackthorn combined. Both of them succeeded. I have used both. They both have Ebay send every bit of data that is available to them directly and they store it in their programs. Both will do everything Ebay does, plus cross post of other platforms. SixBit got Etsy going first but WonderLister got Shopify going first. Etsy will be coming out this fall. Also WonderLister automatically posts Tweets for us and InstaGram and FaceBook Market is on the agenda.
Also both have strong sorting, filtering, cutomized views that you control how you want to see the data. SixBit and what T-Satt likes is they also let you custpomize the data entry fields a little more than WL.
Finacial data goes back for years and is always there. Email programs are available. Sales reports by state, consignors [if you have any] and just so much more.
Both have 30 day trials. both will import your Ebay listings so you can try it and by the way, they don’t destroy your Ebay dashboard data, they import not delete things so if you dont like either of them. Abandon and go right back to using your Ebay interface.
We have our Shopify store just about set and will be moving about 900 plus items over to there this weekend. Then we will do the same when WL gets the Etsy interface all worked out.
Using either of these programs is like NASA’s Command Central. Everything you need to do right in one place. And with both, if you build a relationship with the team, they will also design and build in anything you want to have your version do thngs that the public versions won’t. MY WL has custom code written to allow me to have a lot of custom data fields to hold data about my listings that Ebay doesn’t have a space for.
Go to both web sites, open up two browsers at the same time, reduce your screen size or use two monitors [that’s what we do] and place each side by side and compare what all they do.
Then call them and talk with them personally. I did that years ago and also think T-Satt has also. Then ask them all your questions, tell them your fears, ask them can they do this and that for you. They are designers and love a challenge. Also they may share what is already on the drawing board. I know certain things that WL is going to be doing but that has to stay in the bag until release time. Don’t want SixBit to get hold of some information and certainly I am sure John and his team at SB feels the same way. Competitive advatge things I am sure you understand.
If one is serious about running any type of online business as a full time business, then as the CEO and CFO of your company you deserve to have Enterprise wide type of software to help you drive your business and achieve the level of success you aspire to.
Good luck in your hunt…
Mike at MDC Galleries and Fine Art in Atlanta
[it’s good to be back from vacation and back online.. missed all of this]
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This reply was modified 3 years, 2 months ago by
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