The Primitive Shopkeeper

I never incorporated my business for several reasons - laziness, uncertainty, and the armchair thrill of never limiting my personal liability. I can't stand lawyers, and until recently managed my extensive tax returns without an accountant. Sole proprietorship means never having to include those extra, pesky IRS forms.

So last night I suddenly realized that my income went up alarmingly in 2007. Most people might have noticed this before January; however, I only write myself a paycheck when it is absolutely necessary. But the Christmas influx of deposits shot my business account into impressive and unprecedented territory, and I am scrambling to protect my money from climbing into the next tax bracket.

It's too late to buy a 2007 Hummer... but I'm digging around to find any extra mileage that was overlooked, any daughter labor that wasn't compensated, any meal bought for a sales rep. Sometimes it seems harder to be on one's own than to let the attorneys and CPAs do what Congress designed them to do, i.e. allow the corporation to live large while avoiding taxes.

I suffer from an obsession with an anarcho-primitive neo-Luddite pencil-and-graph paper itty-bitty shopkeeping model. I grew up watching my grandfather nap on a naugahyde recliner at his non-air conditioned furniture store, sometimes only waking up when a customer needed assistance. He made it look easy, and by the time I was climbing on the stacks of warehouse mattresses, it probably was. Granddaddy was my small business guru.

I don't particularly want my shop to grow in sales so much as figure out how to cut costs and make enough money to not worry. I lack ambition, but in this nation that worships industrial growth and the stock market, I feel positively subversive.

But enough of this. It's time to go recline on my futon and handwrite the rest of my checkbook expenses.

NTD