Thursday, August 20, 2009

Hidden Sales Tax (HST)

Yeah, I know!

"Barter - Work for you?" asks my colleague by email.

It's one way of avoiding paying tax, we all know. Even when I'm fully re-imbursed for GST, I resent the time I spend filling out forms and chatting with Those People when I'm late.

I'm all for barter; I'm not convinced that the most convenient medium of exchange (cash) is only medium of exchange.

Indeed, expressing it that way proves my point. If cash is the most convenient medium, it follows that there must be at least one other medium of exchange.

On the other hand, I don't want to go to jail.

Let's try treating this more as a "preferred client" thing; You'll send me an invoice, I'll pay it, but at a preferential rate. That is, you'll get the same amount of cash, but I'll get more hours of your end of the phone, and you'll get the benefit of some insight into your problems, and if I come close to solving some problems, you can try to force me to submit a nominal invoice (good test of YOUR selling powers, eh?), and best of all, whichever of us feels they got the better end of the bargain gets to brag at the next AIC networking meeting (Aug 31st).

I like the idea of promoting other members with a statement "He fixed my web site for a VERY modest fee", or "She succeeded with my baseline testing where I could not, for a VERY modest fee".

It doesn't fool anyone into thinking we're exchanging many $000s, but it DOES say we are serious about business. While spending money on a project and THEN being happy with it gives the testimonial credibility.

In other words, let's play this out and be nice to each other!

P.S. Julia Wooster , besides getting paid $ for testing my stuff gets to keep the FREE COPY of the software packages she downloads to test.

I'm paying her peanuts, but she has the inside scoop on the packages.

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