Business is near equal making the money and doing the paperwork
We are for sure moving forward with this business deal. I personally typed up the agreements and I am really impressed, if I do say so myself, at how they turned out. Now wrenching some of the info out of my wife was oh so fun. "I don't know, we will do it like this(a specific way that was extremely confusing and convoluted), we agreed not in writing on stuff..." And on.
Now this is all past, the deal is closed, the dog grooming shop is half hers. This is honestly exciting and a little anxiety inducing. I have really high hopes for them both to make this something really special.
A concern, or maybe more a musing, is that neither my wife or her partner are paperwork and accounting type of people. Knowing them both fairly well, I can safely say that they both are great at operations but not numbers. As I'm sure most people know or could assume based on working in businesses, business is a LOT of paperwork and numbers and government. I have some reservations of them running afoul of some stupid but not all together insignificant stuff. The 'mom and pop' dog grooming business I've seen is cutthroat and dirty.
Don't cheat!
The other businesses I've been around in this area have really done some strange and dirty things. People talking about the business are casually like, "Where you going to keep your cash? Your not going to claim it and have to make seem legit." Like, excuse me? How the heck is this everyone's assumption. Let's just walk this out a little, if you will.
Why not claim the cash? Fair enough, you would lower your taxable income and thus lower your tax liability owed to "Uncle Sam", sure. Then you have to keep the cash as cash or fudge the books(or do what the last owner of this shop did and keep books so horrible and messy that a forensic accountant team with the FBI would need a second pot of coffee to get through) to make it appear like legit money. My thought to this now becomes why do that? What's to gain and what's the cost?
You get the tax benefit and? What? Oh the tax evasion and fraud charges, potentially. Yeah, that too. I'll admit, I'm a bit conservative with my risk tolerances. I like sure things over stuff in the air, if I can help it, because I start planning for the worst outcome. That isn't always the smart way to do it but that is part of my nature. The point here is that I really hope they both do it clean and upright. Exploit the hell out of the legal loopholes in the tax code but don't do straight tax evasion because your greedy and want to squeeze another dollar from a dime. Selfish as well, I don't want IRS goons or sheriff's deputies coming to my house to take my stuff to pay the tax man for something I wasn't involved in.
A parallel point to the above point is both of these fine ladies expressed interest in maybe doing a second operation of their own in the future. More money means they either be on the up-and-up or really good at juggling a lie. Personally, I'd just take a little less money to have less stress and headache about taxes.
I always end these with saying I support them both and I do. I need a place to really construct my thoughts in ways that leads to constructive conversations around topics that maybe a little charged or end in frustration for several conversations until we figure out how to say it right. I honestly think they both, my wife and her business partner, are 2 good people to trust with a new dog grooming shop. They will both just need some time to figure a few things out and make some mistakes, which of course I'll try to help as much as I can.
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