Cross-posted from MNPP:
During the end of last week and over the weekend, I played hooky, and ‘went to the dogs’, attending a local dog show. One of my friends who was an exhibitor had a minor injury, and needed help, so I arranged for someone else to show one of her dogs each of the four days.
It’s always important to be able to return to work on Monday, not too badly impaired from weekend hobbies and home chores. I know I’m not the only one who had a strenuous weekend from the latter.
The assist came from the daughter of friends, a young woman who is a single mother, and an entrepreneur. She works most Monday-through-Fridays as a massage therapist and office manager in conjunction with rehab therapists and chiropractors. But she took time off for part of the week, as well as working the weekend to work on people who had kinks and sprains and strains and sore muscles at the dog show. She had a steady clientele, in addition to helping my friend by showing one of her dogs – and did some nice winning for her, even though she hadn’t shown a dog for a few years. She also attended to the minor sprain/strain for my friend as well, with great improvement resulting, and was paid for both kinds of services.
I was impressed by her long hours, over seven days without any time off; her 13 year old son was at the dog show with her. (He was working as well; that work ethic is being passed on to her son. He earned $200 and was button-popping proud of himself; but mom wisely hung onto the check for safe keeping.)
Speaking with her as she worked on various people, I was shocked and dismayed to find that people who engage in her line of work, have to pay BOTH sales tax AND an entertainment tax on the services they perform. In addition to that, she had to pay $3,800 for a license to work in a practice in one of the northern suburbs. In most cases, if she were to do what she did this past weekend, work her weekend as well at some kind of event like a dog show or festival, she could expect to pay an additional local licensing fee. Fortunately, because this particular county fairground did not require one, she did not need to pay out of pocket for a year long license for a few days of work.
Other states have licensing and regulation that is statewide, so that such separate licensing is not required if a therapist changes where they work, or wants to work somewhere for just a few days. Having watched her professionalism in treating painful injuries, as well as stress and strain which manifested in very real physical symptoms, there is no question that the ‘entertainment tax’ should not apply, although the sales tax for a service seemed reasonable. The entertainment tax seemed just plain punitive to someone with this kind of professionalism, training, and work ethic.
Further, during the course of the bad weather over the weekend, the booth she had set up was completely destroyed. She was able to salvage her equipment out of it, but it took considerable effort to restore it so that she could continue to work. Fortunately, one of her parents came through on short notice with a loaner replacement shelter, until the damaged one can be replaced.
Looking at her expenses for the weekend, I had to ask myself if in this regard, are we really encouraging small business? Not the Koch Brothers as an S-corporation not-really-small-business business, but the real deal, the genuine hard working, innovative entrepreneur?
Looking at the growing demographic of single mothers, this woman was doing everything we want people to do – she was being self-supporting, she was actively parenting and she was being a ‘maker’ not a ‘taker’, to use the Romney/Ryan terminology.
In our legislative policies, we need to be seeking out areas of business where our state and local licensing and regulation are competitive and as ‘business-friendly’ with legislation providing state-wide licensing and standards similar to those of other states. We should not be adding unfair and unreasonable additional taxation like the ‘entertainment tax’ on medical and health care related services.
My impression is that the conservatives who claim to be ‘business friendly’ act mostly to give unfairly favorable special interest and large corporation or rich individual preferential and unfairly advantageous treatment, but much less so the mom and pop, or in this case just mom, small enterprises.
I want to see Minnesota do more to help people who are working seven days a week, 12+ hour days, taking risks to pay the bills to make their business dreams a reality.
I want to see fair and equitable regulation, and taxation, and encouragement for efforts like this. Time to level the playing field for the real entrepreneurs, the real small business people, like this woman and the other vendors who were working long hours in adverse weather at the dog show, in addition to their regular jobs. We have to decide if we want policies, both regulatory and for taxation, that rewards this kind of effort, or if we want to keep extracting wealth from people like this, in order to put it in the pockets of the 1% of the wealthiest in our country. People with this kind of ambition are the ones we should be helping to get the training they need, giving them the support they need to get the skills to be this productive and hard working, in as many useful fields as possible. Instead we have rip-off for profit educational institutions getting subsidized, and we burden those who want to learn and achieve, and in the case of grad students, research and innovate, with huge debt and expenses.
Between the grooming prep for the dog show, and cleaning up storm damage, especially moving heavy downed tree limbs, and fixing fences…….I think maybe I should be scheduling one of those therapeutic massages……….I could use one myself about now.
Are we doing enough for the really small businesses in Minnesota?
It’s always important to be able to return to work on Monday, not too badly impaired from weekend hobbies and home chores. I know I’m not the only one who had a strenuous weekend from the latter.
The assist came from the daughter of friends, a young woman who is a single mother, and an entrepreneur. She works most Monday-through-Fridays as a massage therapist and office manager in conjunction with rehab therapists and chiropractors. But she took time off for part of the week, as well as working the weekend to work on people who had kinks and sprains and strains and sore muscles at the dog show. She had a steady clientele, in addition to helping my friend by showing one of her dogs – and did some nice winning for her, even though she hadn’t shown a dog for a few years. She also attended to the minor sprain/strain for my friend as well, with great improvement resulting, and was paid for both kinds of services.
I was impressed by her long hours, over seven days without any time off; her 13 year old son was at the dog show with her. (He was working as well; that work ethic is being passed on to her son. He earned $200 and was button-popping proud of himself; but mom wisely hung onto the check for safe keeping.)
Speaking with her as she worked on various people, I was shocked and dismayed to find that people who engage in her line of work, have to pay BOTH sales tax AND an entertainment tax on the services they perform. In addition to that, she had to pay $3,800 for a license to work in a practice in one of the northern suburbs. In most cases, if she were to do what she did this past weekend, work her weekend as well at some kind of event like a dog show or festival, she could expect to pay an additional local licensing fee. Fortunately, because this particular county fairground did not require one, she did not need to pay out of pocket for a year long license for a few days of work.
Other states have licensing and regulation that is statewide, so that such separate licensing is not required if a therapist changes where they work, or wants to work somewhere for just a few days. Having watched her professionalism in treating painful injuries, as well as stress and strain which manifested in very real physical symptoms, there is no question that the ‘entertainment tax’ should not apply, although the sales tax for a service seemed reasonable. The entertainment tax seemed just plain punitive to someone with this kind of professionalism, training, and work ethic.
Further, during the course of the bad weather over the weekend, the booth she had set up was completely destroyed. She was able to salvage her equipment out of it, but it took considerable effort to restore it so that she could continue to work. Fortunately, one of her parents came through on short notice with a loaner replacement shelter, until the damaged one can be replaced.
Looking at her expenses for the weekend, I had to ask myself if in this regard, are we really encouraging small business? Not the Koch Brothers as an S-corporation not-really-small-business business, but the real deal, the genuine hard working, innovative entrepreneur?
Looking at the growing demographic of single mothers, this woman was doing everything we want people to do – she was being self-supporting, she was actively parenting and she was being a ‘maker’ not a ‘taker’, to use the Romney/Ryan terminology.
In our legislative policies, we need to be seeking out areas of business where our state and local licensing and regulation are competitive and as ‘business-friendly’ with legislation providing state-wide licensing and standards similar to those of other states. We should not be adding unfair and unreasonable additional taxation like the ‘entertainment tax’ on medical and health care related services.
My impression is that the conservatives who claim to be ‘business friendly’ act mostly to give unfairly favorable special interest and large corporation or rich individual preferential and unfairly advantageous treatment, but much less so the mom and pop, or in this case just mom, small enterprises.
I want to see Minnesota do more to help people who are working seven days a week, 12+ hour days, taking risks to pay the bills to make their business dreams a reality.
I want to see fair and equitable regulation, and taxation, and encouragement for efforts like this. Time to level the playing field for the real entrepreneurs, the real small business people, like this woman and the other vendors who were working long hours in adverse weather at the dog show, in addition to their regular jobs. We have to decide if we want policies, both regulatory and for taxation, that rewards this kind of effort, or if we want to keep extracting wealth from people like this, in order to put it in the pockets of the 1% of the wealthiest in our country. People with this kind of ambition are the ones we should be helping to get the training they need, giving them the support they need to get the skills to be this productive and hard working, in as many useful fields as possible. Instead we have rip-off for profit educational institutions getting subsidized, and we burden those who want to learn and achieve, and in the case of grad students, research and innovate, with huge debt and expenses.
Between the grooming prep for the dog show, and cleaning up storm damage, especially moving heavy downed tree limbs, and fixing fences…….I think maybe I should be scheduling one of those therapeutic massages……….I could use one myself about now.
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