Video Transcription:

Hi, welcome to the next video of this multi-video series on tax. If you’re an Amazon seller, even if you’re an eBay seller, if you’re a FBA, if you’re not FBA, you’re Etsy, if you’re Shopify, you’re a combination of various versions of that. I think these videos will be very helpful to you.

There’s a lot of information going around, a lot of it not coming from lawyers or even the lawyers who do may not have this much of a 50-state coverage of state and local tax, I certainly do.

It’s just not typical for somebody like me to represent, you know, smaller businesses because the way, you know, it’s supposed to work is that a lawyer with that kind of background is supposed to represent companies that have sort of a 50-state footprint like the Walmart, like the GE, Microsoft, companies that I’ve worked for in the past.

You know, when you’re sort of helping somebody who’s sort of, you know, is running an operation out their home and very successful but, you know, they’re supposed to be able to get by with their local accountants, right?

Their local advisor but, you know, their local advisors aren’t sort of in tune with multi-state tax and all the constitutional law that’s sort of behind multi-state tax and that you have to know really well and be sort of really really up to date with or in tune with just to make sure that you’re not sort of relying on generic assumptions like, you know, physical presence equals nexus.

You have an FBA where you have stuff in every warehouse, therefore, you have physical presence, therefore, you’ve nexus. There’s so many, there’s so much more, you know, it’s so much more abstract and I think there’s just been this, you know, constant inflow of people talking and saying things are very, you know, very basic, very straightforward.

But, you know, anyone who’s ever, you know, been in law before will tell you nothing’s ever straightforward. You know, you take a word like retailer, you know, what’s that definition? Has anyone thought about that? You know, are you even considered a retailer under state law?

There’s just so many arguments I could rattle off but that’s not really why I’m here I just want to tell you, you know, just the kind of be careful, you know.

I keep saying it every video, I just want to stress that be careful out there. I work with a lot of merchants who filled out forms, they’ve done things, they’ve listened to other advisors, non-lawyers especially, and they’ve sent them in a direction they wish they didn’t go.

And sometimes I have to get them out, sometimes I’m representing them in appeals. My clients, I don’t push into appeals, I don’t push into legation, a lot of accountants and non-lawyers will sort of, you know, say well of course, the lawyer doesn’t want you to do this and that, they want to go out and litigate for you and you’ll pay them a million dollars in legal fees.

Well, I’m the first to tell you I know that every merchant I speak to can’t afford that, they can’t afford a million, they can’t really afford hundred and thousands and that’s not how it’s going to work.

No one merchant is going to take this case at least as far as I’m concerned. I’m not going to be bringing individual cases from merchants and that’s not what I’m here to do.

I’m not here to bring you into litigation, I’m actually here to keep you away from it, I want to keep you out of the fire, I want to make sure you understand your specific situation, what the risks are and what action you want to take that you understand and you’re fully aware of it.

There’s a lot more options than you realize. So, just like I said, be careful out there, happy to talk to you, happy to answer any questions and thanks again for watching. Take care.