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TAXES

NEW INTERNET SALES TAX LAWS WILL BE ADDED TO THE LINK ABOVE AS INFORMATION BECOMES AVAILABLE

AS A CONSEQUENCE OF THE SUPREME COURT RULING WAYFAIR VS SOUTH DAKOTA, NO MERCHANT SELLING INTO ANOTHER STATE HAS ANY CLUE WHAT OUR TAX LIABILITIES ARE TO THAT STATE. BECAUSE OF THE AMBIGUITY I MUST INSTITUTE A NEW IBANEZ RULES LAW.

YOU MUST AGREE THAT IF ANY STATE, COUNTY, CITY, OR FED SENDS ME A SALES TAX BILL RELATED TO YOUR SALE, *YOU ALONE* ARE RESPONSIBLE!! FOR THAT DEBT. UNDER THOSE TERMS I AM HAPPY TO FILL YOUR ORDER!

CITES - OVER!!!!

CITES FOR ROSEWOOD IS OVER. THEY REACHED A DECISION AS LONG AS THE ROSEWOOD CONTAINED IS UNDER 10KG IT CAN SHIP PERMIT FREE, ALL EXCEPT BRAZILIAN OF COURSE. THE IS POLICY WILL GO INTO EFFECT IN 90 DAYS SO NOVEMBER 29TH INTERNATIONAL SHIPMENTS CAN RESUME.

Charles Barber, the director of the forest legality initiative for the nonprofit World Resources Institute and a member of the rosewood working group shared: �The exemption for finished musical instruments is a common-sense measure that resolves a key implementation barrier for the otherwise essential rosewood listing. It will remove a major administrative permit burden on CITES authorities that did not have any substantive conservation impact, while continuing to regulate the raw material that goes into instruments. CITES implementation resources can now better focus on the illegal and unsustainable global rosewood trade in furniture.

DETAILS HERE

I AM BACK TO WORK!

VERY SLOWLY!!

Newest poster boy for powerful tools and stupidity. The last thing I expected was an amputation when I decided to just lightly touch a rare old anchor chain gold necklace I was giving my girl for Christmas to the buffing wheel. It was 1:30AM, I wasn't stoned or in other way compromised, I was tired. Normally I'd google anything like this but I was just going to lightly touch it, it had very light tarnish. I was holding it between my fingers, left top and right bottom, and as it lightly touched the softest wheel, which happens to be a spiral sewn, it sucked it into the wheel and caught on the stitching, ripping it out of my hands. Why the right index didn't just flip out of the way like the left did must be the angle it pulled, but since it was right at the joint it was surgical. The edges of an anchor chain are very sharp and it took it like a samurai sword. Within miliseconds the chain whipped around and caught my left, and I'm not positive what happened but I believe it hit the exposed bone of the right and blew the joint apart. It was a good solid and unfortunately sharp chain, now destroyed as it welded and distorted 75% of the links. If you get squeamish like me I wouldn't suggest looking at the pictures, it'sknarly. Called 911 where the told me to wrap it in something sterile, and anybody that knows me knows there isn't anything sterile around the shop, so I looking for my joint as well as organize the shit I knew I'd need to take, dripping everywhere I walked. Found the joint, sitting where all the buff polish lands and washed it off at the sink when the police knocked, opened the door and went back to get ice, and finally saw some paper napkins I could wrap around my finger, just as the cop says the ambulance was there. OK I'll let them take care of the tip, wrapped it in a napkin, put my coat on and locked up. Never assume an ambulance has ice or knows how to take care of loose parts. They put a cold pack on it. Told them they had to take me to Underwood which was my plan hospital but they told me they weren't accepting patients because they were closing, and little did I know but within a couple minutes they pull up to the new hospital they had been building 3 miles down the highway. Yea, it opened on Sunday, I did this 1:30AM Tuesday. It wasn't a hospital, the emergency department consisted of a doctor, a couple nurses, a radio tech, a janitor, and a receptionist. It was a glorified doctors office. Within 10 minutes the Dr. said they had to transfer me to Cooper because of course, they didn't have a trauma surgeon, a hand surgeon on call, or anything else, so they called an ambulance, at a time when even me, definitely not a Doctor, knows that if I want my finger sewn back on time is critical. Every 10 minutes I'd scream Where the F***is my ambulance!!. I didn't follow the timeline but it was 2 and a half hours later before I was in the Cooper ER. Why did it take so long? Because instead of calling the local squad 2 miles away they called their sister hospital 20 miles away, that were all out on calls, just to make sure to keep all that insurance money in the Inspira family. Scabs.

Noel, the type you'd take home to mom if you were 30 again, good bedside manor. told her I wanted everything back together and she looked at the tip and said it was no longer viable, it had been too long. Then she took a huge needle and shot into my palm had to be 10cc of Lidocaine , that was a good 6, creeping up. And walked away for a minute and right back to relocating the bone, and that, was a good 7.5, right on the edge of the full throat groan from turning into yells. [30 years ago I had a 10 when a drill bit broken off at the chuck in my ankle was hand-drilled back out without even a local, but they made sure to have a huge orderlies holding down all 4 corners, there's little pain in the bone, he said, unfortunately it was cutting into the nerve. My wife said they heard me 100 yards away in the waiting room. She told me it would be 6-8 hours to get an OR, but she could have a hand surgeon do it there in the ER. I asked if I had to be conscious and the yes made me opt for the OR, I'd had enough pain by then. Wheel me up to my room and never miss an oxy call. But they take my OR slot, I'm unimportant, there are car crashes and gunshots and more life threatening in the Que that I have the least demand. I get another slot for 11:30 next morning, they come prep me starting at 6, by 10 my surgeon comes up to tell me, I just lost my slot again. He can do it in the room, he swore he could shoot me up where I wouldn't feel a thing and if I did we'd stop and go OR so I agreed. He went to get his travel surgeons kit, 20 minutes later he's back and pulling things out and just ready to unwrap me and his phone rings. My slot just opened back up. Cool, I didn't want to be awake!  That also means I got a lead surgeon instead of an on call, who was in the OR assisting. Yes, of course they fucked it up. It wasn't their fault, during a removal last month he slipped and said, Cooper had changed the stitch manufacturer right before me, and had recently changed back due to complaints, as he's pulling out stitches that were supposed to have dissolved 4 1/2 months ago. Problem is I have about 20 more on the inside, and they're not dissolving either. Yes, I feel every single one, no, it doesn't feel good, please, don't let me smack the tip which is just thin skin over bone, on anything hard. If it ever gets thick enough and the nerves finally decide they know what they're doing. Yes, a couple times my fingernail was killing me, yes, I'd lost another and knew just what that felt like. I almost lost my ring finger when I was 22. Evidently 30,000 of us idiots chop something off every year in the US.

Of course I saw a lawyer [several for opinions], and they mostly agree I had 4 malpractice suits, but it would cost about 75k to sue with an expected outcome of 100k. None of them would touch those odds with a 10 foot. They do not settle, you have to fight them all the way and the cost to even file the suit is 5k as opposed to 250 for a car accident!

Obviously I'm not what I used to be, and everything takes 3 times longer than it did. There will be alot of packages I will turn down, high level packages on cheap guitars that make little money I won't be working 3 times longer to make squadoush. A Pia I'll do. I've been flipping alot cheap AS IS and Bronze, which was and still is better than you'll get from anybody else in this business. I was on the verge of hanging it up last year, I don't plan on doing this for many if any more. You're no spring chicken when you can apply for Social Security next year, and this business is a grind on anybody in any condition, much less my diminished condition. I don't know how much I want to relearn to do with the tendon problems I already have using thumb to middle finger, in fact most of the time I'd almost rather learn to be a lefty. I have done Platinum packages and I am much slower, and I haven't been able to control the tool marks as clean. You reach master level when you've done something 10,000 times, and I can say I'd probably only done 5000, but now it's like starting over. Don't worry, this enterprise may continue even if I don't as I have been in talks with a really nice guy, and another of the best Ibanez techs on the planet, and a couple others, one an existing dealer, another looking for a new gig. But in the meantime, I'm still here, figuring out what I'm doing, carrying on.

To update, after 10 months it's about halfway healed. It still takes me too long to do anything but I've finally gotten control over tool marks from filling fret ends. Stainless, I just hate. It was bad enough with good hands, but it is what it is. I do everything old school now, papers and steel wool. I won't be using the buffer again so no mirror polishing, it's in my head and that horse I'm not climbing back on. Besides, it created way too much dust. I doubt I'll do this more than a couple years anyway, if that. When there's no reason to work, what's the point of going thru the aggravation.

TAXES

NEW INTERNET SALES TAX LAWS WILL BE ADDED TO THE LINK ABOVE AS INFORMATION BECOMES AVAILABLE

With more states rolling out online sales taxes I'll be using eBay's marketplace advice on their collection. I have created a new TAXES page for the purpose of keeping customers up to date on the status of their state and how taxes will he handled. At this point only PA, WA, and OK have programs in place but additional tax news will be kept on the TAXES page.

TAXES!!!!

CONSIDER BUSINESS CLOSED!

OK NOT QUITE YET, WE HAVE A LITTLE TIME UNTIL THIS SNOWBALLS. SOUTH DAKOTA WILL START COLLECTING IN 30-90 DAYS [THANKS FOR BEING SPECIFIC] WITH SEVERAL MORE STATES ALREADY PUTTING LAWS ON THE BOOKS ANTICIPATING THIS DECISION, AND 31 STATES THAT HAVE LAWS ON THE BOOKS, LEAVES RETAILERS ABSOLUTELY CLUELESS WHERE WE STAND. IF THE CURRENT SD LAW CONTINUES TO BE THE STANDARD THE LITTLE GUY WILL BE ALRIGHT, 200 TRANSACTIONS TO ONE STATE WOULD IMPLY 10,000 SALES A YEAR. I AM A SMALL ENOUGH BUSINESS BY SOUTH DAKOTA LAW I WILL NOT HAVE TO PAY SOUTH DAKOTA TAX, UNLIKE SWEETWATER. THEY ABSOLUTELY WILL. BUT I DON'T EXPECT ALL STATES TO FOLLOW THE CURRENT SD TAX MODEL OF 200 SALES, OR $100K IN SALES. I EXPECT SOME STATES TO GO FOR THE JUGULAR SMELLING FREE MONEY. FORCING ME TO MAKE A NEW IBANEZ RULES LAW -

YOUMUST AGREE THAT IF ANY STATE, COUNTY, CITY, OR FED SENDS ME A SALES TAX BILL RELATED TO YOUR SALE, *YOU ALONE* ARE RESPONSIBLE!! FOR THAT DEBT. UNDER THOSE TERMS I AM HAPPILY OPEN FOR BUSINESS!

I CAN'T IMAGINE THE SLIPPERY SLOPE OF THIS MORPHING INTO A RULING THAT EVERY INTERSTATE TRANSACTION IS DUE SALES TAX - I'M TALKING PERSON TO PERSON TAX LIABILITY. IT IS NO DIFFERENCE FOR A BUSINESS TO SELL AN ITEM OR AN INDIVIDUAL, A SALE IS A SALE, A TRANSFER OF MONEY IS A TRANSFER OF MONEY. YOU ARE REQUIRED TO PAY USE TAX ON ANY PRIVATE SALE IN YOUR STATE AS IT IS! THIS IS GOING TO BE CHALLENGED AT SOME POINT BY SOME STATE, NOW HUNGRY FOR ALL THE TAX DOLLARS THEY CAN SUCK OUT OF THE MERCHANDISE SOLD OR DELIVERED INTO THEIR STATES.

Excuse me while I take a minute to figure out how much the next sale I make will cost me. Is this the death of the small internet business? Is it a level playing field or is it just a huge minefield? Most of those small businesses on Main St. have some type of internet presence, they're on ebay or etsy, wherever you can make a sale is where you have to make a sale, this has been the unwritten rule in this world since the creation of e-commerce. You either commerced or you had to survive on foot traffic. Just like before e-commerce you either sent out catalogs for that hopeful 2% sell thru rate of Mail Order, or you built stores all over the country, or, you did both. And every other local business is a franchise anyway!! The internet is a glorious place where you can learn anything, experience everything, but immediately became another platform to sell stuff. What's the difference in a mail order business and an e-commerce business? 5 years. pa-dump. The way we're cross marketed and addroll constantly trying to draw you back to those golf clubs you were looking at last week, or direct laser focused marketing based on your interest and buying profile, we have a constant distraction of BUY ME!! BUY ME!!

I don't see this changing things that much for business, And I see this as the end of many businesses, and the boon to Amazon for being able to sell to all jurisdictions and already be collecting the taxes and submitting the payments. I might have to go on Amazon for the sole reason that they would collect and pay out your State and or Local Sales tax for me, and at a very high price to Amazon [remind me to buy Amazon after the economy crashes!] I don't see that many people today breaking the routine of how they live. I always buy my sneakers local, I just ordered 3 pairs for a friend because she lives so far off the grid it's a little hilarious, from a NJ POV. I buy alot of stuff online and I never really bought it online to save on taxes as much as I bought it where it was available, and cheaper. Although if it was in my state and the difference was the tax to the next guy, of course I'd buy it from NY instead! It's still going to be cheaper online, just now you'll have to add the tax to it, so now I'll start to support my own state more, if I see it's Jersey, I will now buy it here so my tax dollars are stolen by my corrupt politicians instead of the corrupt politicians of your state. Won't everybody do that thought? So instead of people buying from you, they'll buy from someplace in their state. It'll be interesting. Will it affect sales of Interstate Internet businesses? Will it affect Joe's on Broadway, the bulk of who's sales are in the warehouse being sold on Amazon, Amazon became the distribution center for a very large percentage of today's goods, for everybody who's lifestyle is - I shop by pushing buttons on a screen for the cheapest price, I don't go to Walmart, Walmart delivers to me, Amazon's got that covered for the whole United States for every product imaginable.

UNLESS YOU'LL SELLING FOOD EVERYBODY IS ALREADY SELLING EVERYWHERE THEY CAN - AND THE SUPREME'S JUST MADE IT A NIGHTMARE FOR EVERYBODY, BECAUSE IN FLATTENING THE PLAYING FIELD ORGANICALLY YEARS AGO EVERY LOCAL BUSINESS HAS ALREADY DIVERSIFIED TO EVERY SALE PLATFORM AVAILABLE TO THEIR BUSINESS. WHAT WE WILL ALL HAVE TO GO THRU IS CHARGE THE CORRECT TAX ON EVERY SALE, FOR THE 10,000 DIFFERENT SALES TAX JURISDICTIONS IN THE UNITED STATES [DOESN'T SEEM TOO UNITED] AND PAY THEM, TO EACH OF THOSE 10,000 SEPARATE TAX JURISDICTIONS. NJ STATE TAX IS EASY, 6.625 AND GOING UP WITH THE NEW DEM IN OFFICE, PASSING STATE MANDATED HEALTH CARE WITHOUT PUTTING A STATE HEALTH NETWORK IN PLACE!, FORGIVE THE RANT, AS I RANT.

The only business that will not be cursed are those that only rely on foot traffic, never ship anything over any line anywhere, and the playing field is now so tilted to the businesses that has no Interstate sales that the board has fallen over.

CONGRESS!!!!!!

Yea, right, but they are going to HAVE to pass a law to address this or I can see all Interstate sales come to a screeching halt as nobody knows how to pay the taxes, that we don't know how much to charge, to we have no idea where, or when. Am I supposed to start charging you tax right now? I think I am, I think we all are. But now an Interstate sale means collecting money that you owe to your state. I have to collect the Tax you already owe to your state in USE TAX! They're going to kill Interstate business, and if small business is the backbone of America it's backbone will be broken. There will have to be a National Interstate Tax Agency created, with software everybody will have to download, loaded will plenty of NSA Blackhat Trojans so they can keep an eye on everything going on everywhere. You will have to load each Interstate sale into it, it will tell you how much to collect, and it will collect it monthly and be responsible for paying those tax obligations to all of those 10,000 Tax Jurisdictions, for a fee of course. Congress will have to act, but they won't. Do I sound optimistic? If they do I'd expect nothing less than a $450 Million website that doesn't work contracted to a Trump subsidiary, and is fixed by a reputable company for a Million .5. Or was that Obama? I can't keep them straight. It's the Washington way. I know there are private Tax Specialty software companies, a good friend is a VP with one, they are not cheap [remind me to buy Sales Tax Specialty companies stock the next time the economy collapses]

Although this is all so hypocritical as everybody already owes tax on any item bought that tax was not paid, in USE TAX!! If you owe a Sales tax on any local sale, then you owe a USE TAX on every qualifying sale you did not pay your State and Local Sales Tax on. Only 5 States do not charge Sales Tax, but allow city or county taxes, and all but 5 States charge Use Tax. But it will be the burden of all retailers to collect your tax due because nobody every claims their USE TAX!! If everybody paid their USE TAX there wouldn't be a need for me to collect them for your state. Does anyone else see the irony?

But, we all knew it was a possibility since they tried to pressure us to join the Streamlined Sales Tax States Network years ago. This would be the place for Congress to empower with the duty of collecting and distributing taxes, every State that collects Sales Tax needs to be a member of this Streamlined Network. That could possibly save business. It's a great thing for States and the taxes they add to the coffers will help fund lots of good programs, and line the pockets of plenty along the way, it's the American way. But it may not be if Interstate sales collapse because there is no way for small retailers to endure the burden of the looming tax nightmare. And all of that money that has been saved in the US by an Interstate sale will now be a burden to the purchaser, so everybody that buys anything from over a line will have to pay more. Everybody's taxes just went up.

Kennedy made a point to emphasize that in 1992 Mail Order sales account for $180 Billion, [Mail Order does not account for all Interstate sales! This is a Mail Order statistic!] And that the total for all e-commerce sales today was $453 Billion [Please adjust it for inflation!! and it becomes $321 Billion] and all "remote" sales accounted for "nearly" a half Trillion [notice how he jumps to Trillion now], it's not even $500 Million or it wouldn't be nearly a HALF TRILLION. e-commerce is $453B and the total of all Interstate is $400 and something BILLION, adjust for inflation please. I'm amazed that in "nearly" 30 years "remote" sales increased at such a paltry rate. Adjust it for inflation, that's shockingly low.

RANT OVER! I return you to your regularly scheduled, and now more expensive, online shopping experience.

5/31/16 - My site went offline, nothing but 503 Error notices, I logged in to Abaco [which for 15 years was Yahoo until about a year ago they spun it off, sold the division, or whatever, but all customer service was now from India, not California], after logging in there was a "serious problem with your account, contact customer service" message waiting for me, called, and in her worst Punjab accent told me they had suspended my website due to malware activity. I had to ask her to repeat it 5 times before I understood the words. Malware?! There was no malware on my site, it's all loaded from my malware free computer, and I've never gotten any warning message on any page on my site. Any malware had to have come from another site on the same server, or back door somehow. Instead of contacting me and giving me the opportunity to have Queterra scan it for issues to kill, they just killed my site. Dead. Then told me I had to delete all the content that was loaded on their server and reload it. 13.3 gig of data. WHAT?!?!

The only reason I had stayed thru the pain and glitches of Yahoo was - Frontpage [yes, this site is so old it's 100% Frontpage] was no longer supported, and any pages I would reload I'd lose all FP features on the page, so if I changed hosts I'd lose it on the whole site. I'd had problems with Yahoo, and then Abaco at least once every 3 months, and their wait times for CS was half the pain, much less having to understand a different Indian dialect every time I'd call. I have nothing against Indians, I love their food, but I certainly don't want to have to try and understand them when I'm having site trouble!!

Have to reload everything? Well, the decision it was time to MOVE became very easy. I asked for a recommendation in Jemsite, Stealth immediately answered he used A2Hosting and had nothing but good things to say, read a couple reviews, saw they're full SSD based servers, and signed up and started loading. A couple minor issues sorting out the FTP and email, sorted after a single ring of Tech Supports phone, and away it went. DAMN was it loading fast!! I love SSD's, my PC has been SSD for the last 3 years, hopefully everybody will notice a good bump in download speed. Of course nothing goes without issue, if anybody comes across something that doesn't work please let me know, but let me take this opportunity to say thank you the Stealth, and a big FUCK YOU TO ABACO!!!

A new era begins.