28. August, 2003 - Where’s my two dollars?

• I’ve been having what might sarcastically be called fun with the Wisconsin Department of Revenue this year. See, I’ve got an employee who lives in Wisconsin and works from his home, which is only about 40 miles from here. Back around the first of the year, I decided that it would be nice for everyone involved to set up my payroll service so that they would withhold Wisconsin payroll tax from his checks, and then he wouldn’t have to file for a refund here in Minnesota, and send estimated payments to Wisconsin.
  And that started the problems. First it took over a month to get the Wisconsin Tax ID, nevermind that I already have tax IDs for my business at the federal and state (Minnesota) level. Each state wants to issue their own numbers and they never have a simple way of requesting a number. Then once I got the ID, I had to give it to the payroll service. Now we’re in March, and it’ll go into effect beginning April. Not ideal, but we’re at least on the right track, right?
  Come July, I find out that my payroll service has been paying Wisconsin the withheld money quarterly (which means that the April-June payments still haven’t been made), and Wisconsin thinks I should be paying monthly, so they’ve hit me with a bill for $1500 for back taxes. A few phone calls, some mail back and forth, a $375 penalty, and a few more phone calls later, the taxes are paid up, and the penalty has been dropped. Now we’re in August.
  But wait! My business hasn’t been paying Wisconsin unemployment insurance for this employee. Instead, it’s been paid to Minnesota. And to pay that, I need yet another number from a different department within the Wisconsin state government. Today I’m sending off the form to get that number, and my fervent hope is that I can get that issue dealt with before 2003 is over. Wish me luck.
• Zeldman got the contract to rework the Apple website. Here’s hoping they’ll let him do enough so it actually works correctly with their own browser (the developer documentation is in frames, and Safari doesn’t let you search within a framed document without first clicking, which gets annoying about the three-hundredth time you have to do it) and generally makes both Apple and the rest of us happy he got the job. Congrats, Zeldman.
• So, Just Where Is That CD Settlement Money You Were Promised? Well, they say it’s still coming. One of these days. After the lawyers fart around some more. But you’ll definitely get that twenty dollars to make up for each of the six-hundred or so CDs you bought between 1995 and 2000 that were overpriced by at least a dollar each. [fark!]

Copyright 2008, Dave Polaschek. Last updated on Thu, 28 Aug 2003 08:19:34.