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Mistakes You Should Never Make

sethbannon.com

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Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#91

Post by tptacek »

x0x0 wrote: post #89
tptacek wrote: post #33

Of all the financial mistakes you can possibly make running a company, withholding payroll taxes and then failing to remit them is probably the worst. Be thankful you caught this before the liability exceeded your available funds, because company operators are apparently routinely held personally liable when there's a shortfall, and I'm not sure that debt is even dischargeable in bankruptcy. What's worse, minor versi…

The logic here appears to be that since the employee is deemed to have paid the government on the day that an employee receives his or her paycheck, the employer is holding those funds in a trust for the government, to be remitted quarterly. The government appears to believe in Monteiro's strategy: "Fuck you, pay me." So you -- as an officer, an employee who pays bills, possibly a board member, or possibly other rela…

The right strategy here seems to be "just use a payroll company".

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#92

Post by jakejake »

We had a deal with our landlord for paying a reduced rent amount for one year, after which it would go up by $1,500 per month. Well, we had quite honestly forgotten about the deal and the same automated rent payments just kept going through without a word from anybody. About TWO YEARS later our landlord came to us and said "oh yea, remember that rent deal we had? You guys owe us about $36,000 in back rent!"

That sucked but we don't blame anybody but ourselves. It goes to show that you do need to keep track of your own finances and not expect somebody to tell you when you are not paying things properly.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#93

Post by tspike »

danielweber wrote: post #74
matthewmacleod wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What. How is this even remotely acceptable? If discovered it destroys your credibility. Among your employees it destroys your credibility. If I was an employee and found out that this was happening, I'd be extremely upset. I wouldn't trust a thing you say. If you'll lie to customers, you'll lie to me. Your optimism is endearing, but the vast majority of companies I've done business with do this. Often companies I've…

Since you are competing against people who will tell you that the feature they want already exists, people who are too honest in this area will quickly get filtered out of the marketplace. It sucks, but there are lots of markets where the customer says "please lie to me" and gives their business to the person with the most reassuring lie.

This philosophy seems to imply that trust and relationships are worthless in business. If you perpetually promise features that don't exist, you'll eventually promise something that either can't be implemented at all or has to be implemented sloppily to deliver.

How can you possibly sustain a long-term business when you're so willing to damage business relationships?

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#94

Post by rdl »

83b elections and payroll taxes are the only two things which are really really critical from an administrative perspective, in my experience, and can't be fixed later with fairly minimal cost.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#95

Post by octo_t »

BinaryIdiot wrote: post #60
SheepSlapper wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As a developer, I've been on the receiving end of "we promised the client we could do this, and they've already paid us, so get to it" more times than I can count... it's my least favorite salesman trait, by far.

Same here; the worst is when they want a feature that's technically impossible.

its even worse when you're in the meeting with the client when the sales people say you've already got this feature and you're thinking "no, no we don't dear go this is going to take a massive database change and....."

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#96

Post by josu »

tptacek wrote: post #33

Of all the financial mistakes you can possibly make running a company, withholding payroll taxes and then failing to remit them is probably the worst. Be thankful you caught this before the liability exceeded your available funds, because company operators are apparently routinely held personally liable when there's a shortfall, and I'm not sure that debt is even dischargeable in bankruptcy. What's worse, minor versi…

Trying to file your company's taxes on your own is like trying to represent yourself in a trial.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#97

Post by sethbannon »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #88

That had to be a tough article to write, thanks Seth. The thing that really stuck with me is the 'technically true' aspects. Growing up in various places around the world I encountered a number of people for whom their motto was 'its only illegal if you get caught!' The advantages of this motto were very apparent as a teen, you could run a stop light at 11:30pm, there was hardly anyone around, and you could be home b…

That's a beautiful quote from your grandfather. Thanks for sharing.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#99

Post by x0x0 »

tptacek wrote: post #91
x0x0 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The logic here appears to be that since the employee is deemed to have paid the government on the day that an employee receives his or her paycheck, the employer is holding those funds in a trust for the government, to be remitted quarterly. The government appears to believe in Monteiro's strategy: "Fuck you, pay me." So you -- as an officer, an employee who pays bills, possibly a board member, or possibly other rela…

The right strategy here seems to be "just use a payroll company".

yup. I'd be astonished if board members didn't require this to be done because they could be held personally liable.

Re: Mistakes You Should Never Make

#100

Post by aaronblohowiak »

x0x0 wrote: post #89
tptacek wrote: post #33

Of all the financial mistakes you can possibly make running a company, withholding payroll taxes and then failing to remit them is probably the worst. Be thankful you caught this before the liability exceeded your available funds, because company operators are apparently routinely held personally liable when there's a shortfall, and I'm not sure that debt is even dischargeable in bankruptcy. What's worse, minor versi…

The logic here appears to be that since the employee is deemed to have paid the government on the day that an employee receives his or her paycheck, the employer is holding those funds in a trust for the government, to be remitted quarterly. The government appears to believe in Monteiro's strategy: "Fuck you, pay me." So you -- as an officer, an employee who pays bills, possibly a board member, or possibly other rela…

This is why you use a payroll company that takes all the money for you for each paycheck and handles the quarterly filing for you -- no "extra cash" hanging around. I think this is called "Full Service Payroll" and can even include insurance against tax liability. I assume they make money on the float, but I'm not sure.
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