Business Friendly Republicans?
They don’t raise taxes, the just jack up fees and fines.
From the Miami Herald this typical occurrence: New fees law hurting small businesses
Small businesses across Florida have been dissolved under a new law that requires owners to pay thousands of dollars in fines they say they can’t afford.
Mary Annis is one of those business owners. For the past 15 years, her North Palm Beach-based firm Bluegrass Lawn Care Inc. has paid a $150 annual report filing fee to the state each year. In 2010, she missed the deadline.
Annis learned last week that she must fork over $750 to the Florida Department of State’s Division of Corporations if she wants to remain incorporated.
Blame it on e-mails that Annis said she never received from the state.
In May the legislature repealed a law that allowed the Division of Corporations to waive $400 late fees. Before, if the corporation claimed it did not receive notice of the filing deadline, it could be granted a waiver.
The Division of Corporations wanted to eliminate waivers and halve the fines. The legislature just eliminated the waivers, and is plugging holes in their budget with the increase in fines.
The Division of Corporations had already stopped mailing notices to businesses to “save” money, and starting sending e-mails, which means that all a business gets for its $150 is an entry in a data base, literally a “filing fee”. Spending less than a dollar of that fee to mail a post card was apparently extravagant.
