The World of an Idiot

Apparently, there was a fairly recent incident of a person (or persons) buying handmade items from various sources and selling for a profit. This is normally an ok thing to do in a capitalist society, except this person (or persons) was passing off this work as their own.

As my information goes, this person was found out, called out, and removed from the venues they were selling from. Yay! A triumph for handmade artists everywhere!

The party has now started to attack those who got them removed from such venues (ie, the artists whose work was stolen). They have a blog which they update with personal information and indicate that a seller or artist has been reported to their state tax authority. It's an amusing read, actually, because it looks like they're taking the date that a seller signed up for the venue and comparing it to the date that public records indicate they registered to collect sales tax in their current state.

This is laughable to me, because those dates have nothing to do with each other.

For example, I registered on Etsy in April of 2008. I registered to collect sales tax this month. By this person's reason, I have been evading my state taxes for more than a year. What the public information doesn't state is that I did not live in this state at the time I registered for the site, and I did not open the shop until May of 2009. If they had this bit of information, they could further try to say I was evading my state tax for three months. Again, the information not available is that I have made no state taxable sales in that time. I admit that part is sheer luck, but it's the truth. If I don't sell in the state, I don't have to pay state sales tax. I haven't had an in-state sale yet, so I'm perfectly legal.

I just find it interesting that this self-righteous party is so quick to accuse others because they were found out, but their accusations are not based on facts. They're based on unrelated dates with a lot of assumption thrown in. Granted, it causes trouble for the people they attack, but it also wastes the time of investigators and the money of the tax payers (which includes the accusing party, does it not?).

The things idiots will do boggles the mind.