Bread Stuy Seized By Feds

Financeguy and benson — do you know something others don’t? IMO, before condemning a tax issue as theft, a lot more informaton is needed.

This may be as simple as bad accounting or business structure advice (or not seeking professional advice in the first place) — being told that certain employees could be classified as contractors for purposes of withholdings, etc., or that all the food items were exempt from sales tax, or who knows. This wouldn’t excuse the failure to pay taxes interest and maybe penalties (assuming that it was not explicitly poor advice from a professional), but that’s a far cry from “theft.” Certainly their inability to settle this with the IRS or State tax people pre-seizure makes it evident that a lot of businesses are really scraping by and don’t have even moderately deep cash reserves.

Yes, it most certainly is bxgrl. Most small business owners don’t understand the idea of adequate capital. You shouldn’t open a business without enough money to cover about 2 years of losses in expectations of sales volumes not meeting targets.

When that situation occurs, as it must have here, everyone’s a loser; the customer, the neighborhood, the landlord, the employees, the suppliers and the owners.

My sympathy is in that not everyone who goes into business has an MBA from Harvard. Not everyone who starts a business, especially a food business, is aware of all of the pitfalls, regulations, and yes, taxes, that go into running a business, especially in NYC. Yeah, maybe they SHOULD have planned better, had more of a reserve, a better business plan, whatever they did not have. Maybe they should have been nicer people, that’s certainly subjective, because they have always been pleasant when I’ve been in there. Who REALLY knows what the story is, no one here does.

I’m willing to give them the benefit of the doubt, the same as I’d do for any small business in any part of town, because I’ve been there. If every small business that opened in this town ONLY did so when every single duck was in line, every rule and regulation investigated, every contingency planned for, and every small business was able to have a large stack of cash in the bank to cover every situation, there would be only a handful of new businesses starting up. The owners took a chance, had a great product, and maybe made some mistakes along the way. I still hope they can pull out of it.

People always complain there are no amenities in Bed Stuy. Someone opens one, runs it sucessfully for the last X years, and is now in trouble. They get my sympathy.

So much for filling the sympathy and understanding quotient for the day. Running you own small business is a very different undertaking than working for a big company with bucks.