#1 2016-11-10 14:17:48
Local cord wood, compost and organic family farm, slightly "off-grid". No CC, no debit, no web site and no checks - cash on delivery thank you very much.
$250 p/cord all under the table and nobody thinks twice 'cuz it's just a barn in the middle of nowhere with some piles of wood (very nice wood mind you). Hell I just bought 4 cord off of them and not a paper trail to be found.
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#2 2016-11-10 16:03:54
The way it should be, business run on a nod and a handshake and no interested 3rd parties.
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#3 2016-11-10 16:48:30
Lot's of business conducted in same manner around these parts.
Banks are nothing more than snoop tools for the IRS.
Building that stack of Benjamins the safe...not as easy as one would think.
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#4 2016-11-10 17:59:40
JetRx wrote:
Lot's of business conducted in same manner around these parts.
Banks are nothing more than snoop tools for the IRS.
Building that stack of Benjamins the safe...not as easy as one would think.
Point well taken.
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#5 2016-11-11 10:52:07
Where they get you is when you want to declare the costs of running your business. Delivery and splitting fuel, chainsaw repairs and maint, whatever the crackhead running the splitter costs, insurance if you want it, etc. Those come out of the bottom line and you can't deduct any of it unless you want to pay income taxes on all of it. If your expense ratio is less than your tax ratio then you eat the costs. If more, go legit and run a paper trail. Can you keep your expenses below 30-40% of gross? Then that's an excellent candidate for an underground business. There are millions of them in the US, but it doesn't always make sense for high expense businesses.
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#6 2016-11-11 11:57:09
Well they pay cash to land developers for the logs and it's a family run business. They do accept credit cards for their ag items which probably operates at a loss. All receipts are hand written, easy way to run a laundry business. Probably doing work for said developers.
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#7 2016-11-11 12:21:02
Emmeran wrote:
Well they pay cash to land developers for the logs and it's a family run business. They do accept credit cards for their ag items which probably operates at a loss. All receipts are hand written, easy way to run a laundry business. Probably doing work for said developers.
They probably get paid by the developers for clearing the land. But running part of the business *at a loss* and not the part that makes any money is easily detectable by the IRS. They pass it by the sniff test and nobody runs a business at a net loss or profits too low to sustain the business. My neighbor the lawn guy got caught in just this situation, depositing some checks, cashing others immediately. If you get nothing but fat bills, then you might be OK, but you have to be twice as careful doing it halfway.
Remember who ultimately caught Capone.
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#8 2016-11-11 13:48:47
It's actually better than that. The developers by "wooded" or "partially wooded" property and have it cleared by contractors. The clearing contractor is payed per acre but sells the logs by the truckload some via contract excess via cash to independent haulers. The hauler sells cash to the splitter/vendor, the guy I buy from.
There isn't an actual quantity per truck ever recorded from start to finish and they are all small/dba businesses with hand written record keeping. Also I didn't measure out the cords, I just eyeballed it, so if it's short or long I don't really know. It's all cash with hand written receipts and 50% of time it's sold to renters so it's highly likely that the receipts aren't the receipts that the IRS sees.
Dirty money buys the logs and clean money comes back from the cord buyer (me) and probably turns a tidy profit at the same time because there is no accurate record of either starting product or ending product.
**And I tried to pay via check as it's a hassle to get that much cash. I told them to deliver once the check had cleared but they were adamant - Cash Only.
Last edited by Emmeran (2016-11-11 13:50:26)
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