Zero To A Hundred – Episode 36: George Sleeman On Staying Compliant With Sales Tax

Zero to a Hundred - Jarrod Guy Randolph | George Sleeman | Sales Tax

 

Accelerators! 🚀 Sales tax compliance can feel overwhelming, but George Sleeman, founder of TMTY Tax Consulting, is here to break it down. With 35+ years of experience in tax consulting and as one of Dave Ramsey’s ELP-endorsed accountants, George shares the key strategies businesses need to stay compliant, avoid costly mistakes, and even recover overpaid taxes through a reverse audit.

Whether you’re managing e-commerce, services, or physical products, this episode is packed with actionable insights to help you navigate sales tax like a pro! 🎯

What’s on the Menu:

💼 Common mistakes businesses make with sales tax and how to avoid them.

🔍 The benefits of a reverse audit to reclaim overpaid taxes.

🏦 How voluntary disclosure agreements can save your business from penalties.

Why Tune In?

George dives deep into the nuances of state and federal compliance, shares his thoughts on automation versus human expertise, and explains how businesses can stay ahead of constantly changing regulations. Get ready to protect your business, save money, and gain clarity on all things sales tax!

💬 Gem from George:

“Your financials are the resume of your business—make sure they’re spotless.”

Get in Touch with George:

📧 Email George at George@TMTYLLC.com or visit TMTYLLC.com to connect.

Don’t miss out—hit that subscribe button and let’s take your business from zero to a hundred! 💥

 

Watch the episode here

 

Listen to the podcast here

 

George Sleeman On Staying Compliant With Sales Tax

Accelerators, today on Zero to a Hundred. I’m excited to introduce our guest, George Sleeman. He is the founder of TMTY, a tax consulting and compliance firm that has a specialty in sales taxes, and they work with businesses across the U.S. The founder, George, has an incredible background. I’m excited for you guys to get to know him. He has a dual degree, one in criminal justice. He worked in that industry for many years and also in accounting, where he has been servicing individuals and businesses for over 35 years. He is also one of Dave Ramsey’s ELP-endorsed accountants.

Some of the things that we’re going to cover today are mistakes businesses make around taxes, how to do a reverse audit for overpaid taxes, how to do proper sales tax reporting, this is something you’re all going to want to listen to. I learned a lot from this, and all the things that you didn’t know you needed to know about sales taxes. Also VDAs, which are voluntary disclosure agreements, and how they can help you and keep you out of trouble.

For those of you who do not know me, my name is Jarrod Guy Randolph. I am the founder of BoxFi. We are the nation’s leading payment consultant, providing business growth solutions for businesses across the U.S., and I’m very excited to share the network I’ve built over my 25-year entrepreneurial journey to help you grow your business and become more profitable. Ladies and gentlemen, let’s accelerate together. George Sleeman, it is wonderful to have you on Zero to a Hundred. How are you doing in 2025?

So far, doing pretty good.

You’re our first interview of the year, so don’t muck this up.

I’ll try not to, but I am not making a promise.

How Jarrod Built His Business

You are the tax consultant and compliance extraordinaire and work with firms across the U.S. We’re going to dive into your specialty, what you focus on, and how you help the clients that you work with. You have an interesting backstory, and I would love for you to tell the audience how you ended up in this business and built the success you’ve built.

I cooked my way through college at first, then I became a bartender, and I did all kinds of things. I used to have really long hair, believe it or not. I started working in corrections back in 1994, and I spent the majority of the time between 1994 and 2011 doing law enforcement. I was a cop, I was a correctional officer, I was a probation officer for a short stint. I’ve done that in Arizona, South Dakota, and here in Colorado.

The whole time, I was doing income taxes for people because, back when they taught you things in high school in 1987, my senior social studies, or civics, whatever you want to call it, teacher had us do taxes. He taught us about taxes, taught us about the stock market. I realized the stock market’s not for me, but I enjoyed doing taxes.

When I got hurt on the job as a cop, workers’ comp wouldn’t pay the bills, so I started charging for my income tax returns. Since then, I’ve opened up a second company that does nothing but income taxes. TMTY has developed into a very niche company of sales tax and Secretary of State compliance, and, depending on what happens in the court cases, the CTABOI arena. I was a cop. I was a bartender. I was a cook. Now, I’m an accountant. I’ve got a degree in criminal justice and in accounting.

Bringing A Human Element To The Business

You’ve done a lot in your life and in your career, and you’ve worked with people in many different businesses in many different facets. I believe that’s one of the things that helps you bring that human element to the business. Talk to me about the importance of dealing with a human being who understands the nuances of compliance and law, especially today when so many things are automated.

Automation’s great, don’t get me wrong. There are many things that can be automated. I don’t think that everything should be automated. I believe that if you want to talk to a person, you call me, and you’ll get the owner of the company, me. We will sit down, and we’ll hammer out the problems and the details to get things taken care of correctly.

There are a lot of companies out there that automate sales tax. They’ll automate your sales tax collection, they’ll automate your sales tax reporting, they’ll automate the filing of those sales tax returns. Let me give you one example of where that doesn’t always work. I have a client, automated sales tax collection. He was using automatic filings through them. I was just on board, overlooking things.

The client is supposed to check every single state by the sixth of the month with this particular company to ensure that it is right. He doesn’t have time. I’m not able to tell immediately if something’s wrong with his data collection but that particular company took all of his information for the past two years and said those sales happened in a January time frame that was due. He ended up paying $20,000 extra in sales tax because we didn’t file those individually, personally. He had that company filing them on what’s called autofile. Now, had we filed them individually, we would have seen, this is wrong. We could have backed out the bad information.

Is that based on them? Was this an e-commerce company?

E-commerce.

This was an e-commerce company. Was that based on them filing all of the information in one month versus filing it in individual months?

We had filed them as should be for the last several years, but this automation company gathered up all of his information for the last two years and said that it happened in January of 2024. He repaid all of that sales tax that he’s paid in the last two years, he had to pay again.

There was no way of contesting that?

There is. We went in and did that. We had to amend those returns. We got refunds where we could, but some of the states won’t give you a refund. They give you a credit against future sales tax. He was out $20,000 on a tax flow, and it took us months to get that squared away.

Biggest Mistakes In Sales Tax And Compliance

That sounds like a bit of a nightmare. Frankly, that might be an understatement, because if I had $20,000 disappear out of my account, or I had to pay that I did not desire to pay, I’d be really frustrated. What are some of the mistakes that businesses make around sales tax and compliance, and ways in which they can avoid them?

There are a couple of big ones. Number one, don’t believe everything on the internet. Everything that you read on the internet is subject to interpretation, as all rules and laws are subject to interpretation. If you got five accountants in a room that said you have nexus in this state, I would be amazed. You get five accountants in a room, you will get six answers because that’s just the way people interpret stuff. There are some people who believe that, because they’re e-commerce and they only sell on Amazon, they don’t have to do anything in any state other than where they currently live. Some of them will even argue, “Amazon collects it, so I don’t have to do anything.” You do.

Staying Compliant To Economic Nexus

Let’s talk first about Nexus. Give our audience, for those who might not be a retailer, they’re not totally familiar with Nexus, what it means, and what the key aspects are to make sure that you are compliant around Nexus on a per-state level.

Nexus is, in layman’s terms, a presence. You have a physical presence. My feet are in Colorado. I have a Colorado physical Nexus. If I sold a sales-taxable product or service, I will be subject to sales tax on those items or services. Some states tax a service, some don’t. Colorado is, unfortunately, trying to, and I’m working with a group to make that not happen. That, in a nutshell, that’s what Nexus is.

The Quill decision with the Supreme Court all those years ago said that if you have a physical presence in a state, you have to collect and remit sales tax, and you don’t have to anywhere else. Along comes 2018, 2019, and there’s the Wayfair decision with the Supreme Court. That expanded the Nexus definition to not just a physical presence but an economic Nexus or an economic presence.

Economic presence, that gets gray, kind of. It’s getting more and more black and white every day. South Dakota v. Wayfair. Wayfair said, “We don’t owe sales tax in South Dakota. We’re not physically located there. We have no warehouses there.” South Dakota said, “You sell enough in here that you should be paying us. It’s like you’re here.” It went all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, and the Supreme Court sided with South Dakota. They set a standard of 200 transactions or $100,000 of transaction sales into the state to develop economic Nexus.

Interesting. Let’s say that I am an online retailer, and I sell t-shirts, and I do 500 transactions. I’m currently in New York. I do 500 transactions in Tennessee. What does that mean for me as a company with sales tax?

You have to understand that a transaction is an invoice. It is not 500 shirts. It is 500 separate sales.

Understood.

In Tennessee’s case, and I’m trying to remember what their threshold is, but let’s use the South Dakota v. Wayfair standard of 200 transactions or $100,000. You sold 500 t-shirts. Now, did you sell that in 100 different sales of five t-shirts each? You don’t have physical Nexus, but the total cost, retail cost, of those shirts was $50,000. You don’t have economic Nexus based on South Dakota v. Wayfair because you had less than 200 transactions and less than $100,000 in sales.

Zero to a Hundred - Jarrod Guy Randolph | George Sleeman | Sales Tax

 

 

With $50,000 of sales, you don’t have economic Nexus, but now, if those t-shirts were $150,000, now you have economic Nexus. What the states are saying, or what the court said, is that you have a large enough footprint of sales into a state that you might as well physically be there. You have an economic impact on that state’s economy.

Me, as the business owner selling those t-shirts, I would then have to pay sales tax in Tennessee?

Yes, maybe, possibly, could be, it depends.

Aren’t I already paying sales tax in New York?

You don’t pay sales tax in New York on sales made outside of New York.

I understand what you are saying.

If you paid sales tax when you bought items, you have acquired a whole other mess you have to clean up. Share on X

If you paid sales tax when you bought the items, 1) you’re foolish, and 2) you’ve got a whole other mess that we’ve got to clean up.

That’s actually an interesting concept because you should have a resale certificate where you’re not paying sales tax because you’re selling it to an end user who’s paying the sales tax. What happens if you’re a business owner where you have paid sales tax on an item that you’re going to resell or a product that you’re going to resell? How do you go back and recapture that? What could potentially be done?

There are a couple of different ways of doing it. One is you only charge sales tax on the markup. That gets me a payment. The other is that you go back to the vendor that you bought those items from and say, “I forgot to give you my sales tax exemption. Please refund me the sales tax that you collected.” That vendor is going to say, “No.”

Now, you have to go to the state and apply for a sales tax refund. That’s always fun because the state wants the receipt showing that you bought it and paid sales tax. They want to see your sales tax exemption, which you should have if you have the sales tax license. Then, they want to see that you resold those items. Now, they want the transactions that show you sold those items and that you collected the proper amount of sales tax. You’re doing an internal audit of yourself. Many of the states will say, “Here’s your refund.” Some of the states will say, “Here’s a credit.”

A credit is better than nothing, but when you’ve paid it, to your point, you said this earlier, when you paid it out of pocket, that is something that you now no longer have that cash flow in hand.

ot everybody on the internet sells 200 items and makes those 200 items a hundred thousand. Share on X

You have to remember, not everybody on the internet sells 200 items and makes those 200 items be a hundred thousand. There could be a guy that is selling money clips for $4 a piece. He happened to sell 200 into a state that has that as one of the economic thresholds. He sold $800.He still has to pay.

How do you help your clients keep up with these changes that you’re constantly seeing at a state level, at a federal level, to make sure that they are compliant?

My research people stay up to date, including myself. We are signed up for damn near every newsletter that the state will put out. We’re signed up because we have sales tax licenses in literally every state for at least one of our clients who has a sales tax license. We get notifications of sales tax changes. Alaska, for example, just sent one out saying that they’re getting rid of the 200 transactions. They’re going to limit it to the $100,000. Now, some of the people listening to this are going, “Alaska doesn’t have a sales tax.” You’re right. The state does not, but cities inside Alaska do.

Interesting. How would they bifurcate selling in the state versus selling in a specific city? How would they calculate that tax?

By what address did it go to.

Jarrod’s Biggest Sales Tax Issues

Interesting. What’s one of the biggest sales tax issues that you’ve run into with a client based on the changes in compliance?

Let me give you an example of the trickiest state out there. I think the most aggressive and the biggest pain in the butt, or what we call a PETA, pain in the backside, California.

California is a fascinating state.

When Wayfair passed, they originally said it was $100,000 or 200 transactions, but then they later changed and they said, as it always wasn’t, anybody with a physical presence in California has to collect sales tax. Makes sense. They changed it to remote sellers, $500,000 within a calendar year, you have to collect sales tax. Pretty cut and dry. Most people are going off half a million. Thank goodness. “I’m not going to sell that much. I sell on Amazon.”

You’ve got to define remote seller. A remote seller is somebody who has absolutely no physical presence inside the state. They have no warehouse. They have no employees. They have no independent contractors, and they are physically outside of the state conducting business, but they have inventory in an Amazon warehouse. According to California statute, inventory in a warehouse that you own, the inventory you are storing in a warehouse that is not yours, still considered physical presence. You have physical presence in California. Now you have to have a sales tax license.

Technically, your product is physically in California at an Amazon warehouse. I do understand that. Is there a certain limit, minimum, maximum, of how much inventory you have to have in this warehouse, or could it literally be one t-shirt?

One t-shirt. Here’s the thing, California will go to Amazon and say, “Give me an EIN number or social security number for every seller who stored anything in your Amazon warehouse.” Amazon turns it over. This whole thing gets uglier. Now they know you have physical presence there because they have the records documented.

They will send you a letter saying you owe sales tax because you have physical presence. “You don’t have a sales tax license. You need to get one. Here’s the penalty. Here’s the interest. Here’s the estimate of what we think you’re going to owe us.” By the way, the Franchise Tax Board, which does the sales tax, also does the franchise tax. If you’re anything but a sole proprietor, you have to file a franchise tax return at the end of the year. In an LLC, it’s a minimum of $800.

Now, there’s the LLC. I’m assuming that’s only if the LLC is active. If you’re actively doing business? That’s if you have an LLC, period.

If you have an LLC and you sell into California or have physical presence in California, you have a franchise tax return.

Stay compliant with sales tax and maximize business growth at the same time by working with a sales tax compliance accountant. Share on X

Navigating The Nuances Of Every State

This is really interesting because we’re getting into nuance on a state basis. What’s really important for the audience is these nuances exist in every single state. These are the little things that you get tripped up on, where it ends up costing you $2,000, $10,000, $30,000, $80,000, depending on how much your business is selling, if it is not taken care of properly from the beginning. What advice would you give small and midsize businesses on how to make sure that they are staying compliant and balancing their business growth so they don’t run into a much bigger issue in the future?

There are very few of us out there, but find a sales tax compliance accountant. Many CPAs will do it in their own state. Even though they may not enjoy doing it, they will do it, and you’ll end up paying for it. You can contact us. We work nationwide. You need to have a complete record of all of your sales from the Wayfair decision forward.

I have a client who did not collect sales tax in Illinois. When he started, he was doing $10,000 to $50,000 a year in total, outside of the state that he was in. I don’t want to give away too much information due to client privacy, but he was in a state where he had a physical Nexus, and we filed all those. I told him, “You’re getting big. You’re getting huge.” One year, he was selling $50,000. The next year, he sold $250,000. The year after that, it was $3 million. He hasn’t given up.

Love that.

I do too. Great. This is where you listen to your accountant. You’re going to have physical nexus depending on where you get your stuff from, or you’re going to have economic nexus simply by volume. Illinois contacted this client and said, “Where’s our sales tax?” The reason I say you’ve got to go back to the Wayfair decision is that’s when Wayfair dictated economic nexus, and so Illinois went all the way back to 2018. He owes approximately half a million dollars in sales tax, not counting penalties and interest.

Let’s say you’re an e-commerce business. When you’re deciding where to register for your sales tax, whether it’s economic presence versus physical presence, what is the best way to approach that?

 

Zero to a Hundred - Jarrod Guy Randolph | George Sleeman | Sales Tax

 

Again, you need to take a look at all of your sales and do it based on that state’s threshold. Some states use a calendar year. If between January 1st and December 31st, you sold X number or Y value, you have nexus. Once you have nexus, you have nexus until you don’t, meaning you get the license, you keep it, you just stay compliant until you’re going to go out of business. That’s my recommendation because the cost of closing, reopening, closing, reopening, based on rollercoaster sales, is just cost-prohibitive. Get that sales data for that state. You’re going to have to do it for every state that charges sales tax, and the states that don’t, like Alaska, because their cities do.

Is there any state where you’re technically not paying sales tax at all? Oregon is the only state?

That’s the only one I can think of off the top of my head. Even Montana, which does not have a sales tax, does allow the cities to charge a sales tax on certain tourist items. Sales tax is controlled by the state, but the cities have the right to charge a separate tax. That’s why you find in many states, Tennessee, they’re flat rate, New Jersey, flat rate. Come to Colorado, folks, it’s everywhere between 3.9% and I’ve seen 12%, depending on where you ship it to.

How Online Merchants Can Stay Compliant

Talk to me about this. I’ve got one of the merchants that we represent who has several hair salons, and they created their own product line years ago. The product line is growing exponentially, and they’re in the seven figures in sales just for their product line. They sell through Amazon as well as on their website. How do these marketplace facilitators, like Amazon, Etsy, or Walmart, impact the sales tax responsibility that these sellers have?

The sales tax responsibility will be on the marketplace facilitator. Every state has said Amazon, Wayfair, Etsy, they will collect the sales tax for you. Again, you have to look at each state’s laws. Let’s go back to California. California says that you have a physical presence if you have anything in their Amazon warehouses.

Do you know why they do that? It’s not because they expect you to pay sales tax on it, the marketplace is already doing it, but they want their franchise tax. If you have a sales tax license, they know what business entity you are, and now they’re going to get you for the franchise tax. If you register with the Department of Revenue, many of those Departments of Revenue are going to require you to register with the Secretary of State, basically getting a permission slip to conduct business in their state as a foreign entity. This is all regulation and monitoring.

It’s fascinating because a lot of this, I’m not actually aware of, and we deal with a lot of businesses. The thing is that many business owners know this, but a lot of them aren’t aware of it because I know, in particular, some of them that I’m close with aren’t necessarily doing this properly from the conversation that you and I are having. What should an e-commerce business know about reporting sales in their home state versus out-of-state shipping rules?

When we’re dealing with marketplace and marketplace only, there’s a difference between marketplace and selling on your own website using Shopify or WooCommerce or whatever. Completely different than just Amazon, just eBay, just Etsy. We need to make sure that distinction is there because those marketplaces are going to collect and remit any and all sales tax for the most part.

Again, we’ll come back to Colorado on that one. They will collect it and remit it on your behalf. They’ll take the sales tax collected out of your cut and maintain that money. You’ll get that, but you have to have the sales tax license in your home state so that you can purchase those items without paying sales tax by getting your sales tax exemption. Your sales tax license is your sales tax exemption. One license works for every state. There are eleven states that will not accept a sales tax exemption from a state other than their home.

Let’s say I’ve got one of my other merchants, a candle and fragrance company. They don’t sell in all 50 states, but I know they’re in about 35 states. Let’s say there are five states that all require different sales tax compliance, whatever it may be. As a business owner, what do you have to do to make sure that you have the right sales tax exemption forms for each one of those states?

You have to check with the state. The exemption form goes to the vendor that you’re buying your materials from. If they’re selling wax candles and soy candles, where’s their vendor for the wax and the soy? We’re going to pick a state here just for fun, Colorado, my home state. They have a vendor in Illinois that they buy their wax, their paraffin, from. Illinois will not accept a sales tax license from Colorado or any other state. They will only accept their own. To get a sales tax exemption in Illinois, you have to get a sales tax license in Illinois. If you want to keep buying from that vendor and not pay sales tax, you have to get a sales tax license in Illinois.

Let’s say you’re a sales business and you are online, or even if you have, it doesn’t matter, a portion of your sales online, and you’re growing and expanding. What should you do as a business owner to sit down and make sure that you are mapping out the right plan to be compliant with sales tax across all of the different states that you’re going to be selling in?

By talking to your sales tax accountant. Unless you want to spend hours and hours researching the stuff that we do every day, you’re going to need to talk to them. Your other option is to go into every state statute, look at what their economic threshold is. Do they include marketplace sales in that economic threshold? Some do, some don’t. Some will, some won’t.

If you’re a mixed seller, that throws a whole other wrench into it. Will your state or the state where your vendor is accept a sales tax exemption from other states? Eleven of them do not. The others do. California, Illinois, Washington, D.C., they don’t. Those are the big ones. Sit down and make a plan and say, “I’m not going to purchase from people in these eleven states,” or “I’m not going to sell into these states because I don’t have the sales tax license to do that.”

Sitting down and looking at where you’re going to be acquiring product and where you’re going to be selling the product is really important for your business model to understand what your costs are going to be. That’s something I’d venture to say 99% of business owners never look at. Just deciding that you are going to acquire your paraffin wax from a state that’s more favorable, that accepts your sales tax exemption, versus buying from one that won’t, that could save you thousands of dollars as a business owner.

If you are insisting on not paying sales tax, you are making a bad business decision. Share on X

It could. It depends on how stubborn you want to be. If you’re insisting on not paying sales tax, but it’s cheaper, you’re making a bad business decision, because it’s cheaper even with the sales tax. If you want to not pay sales tax at all and you can get a better price from a place that won’t charge you sales tax, if you get the sales tax license, why are you saying no?

Benefits Of Doing A Reverse Audit

Talk to me about some business owners who may be stuck in, “I didn’t have the professional on my side to help guide me through this. I know that I’m paying more than I should be paying.” What does a reverse audit look like, and what is the benefit or the value to businesses in running one of those in terms of recuperating overpaid sales taxes?

The reverse audit is going to look at all of your sales and your sales tax filings that you have done. You’re also going to look at the sales tax that you should have filed and should have collected but didn’t. It’s going to be an exposure, basically. We take a look at all of those sales. We take a look at everything that is going on with that and see, did you overcollect? Did you collect when you shouldn’t have? How are you going to get that money to the state, or are you going to send it back to the clients?

We take a look at all the items that are in effect for the last several years. We’ll go back as far as you want us to, no sooner than Wayfair, unless you had a physical location in the state. We’ll go back as far as you want us to. From that, we can figure out, did you overcollect, undercollect? Did you not collect at all?

Let’s say you undercollected. What could that mean for your business?

If you undercollected, the state doesn’t care. You’re going to pay what you should have. It’s going to come out of your own personal pocket or the company’s pocket. On the same note, if you overcollected, I don’t recommend doing it, but if you overcollect and you’re not doing it maliciously, you’re going to just pay what you overcollected. Because if you collected it, you will pay it.

Understood.

There is one other option that you could do, though it’s a needle’s eye of possible things. If you collected sales tax when you should not have, you can either pay it to the state, but to pay it to the state, you’ve got to get a sales tax license so they know where it goes, or you have to refund it to your clients. If you accidentally charged no sales tax, you’re going to pay it.

If you accidentally charged sales tax or an excessive amount of sales tax, you can refund it to the client, and you won’t be in trouble for that, unless you were supposed to collect it, didn’t know that you were supposed to collect it, and then refunded it, and then later on you get audited, and they can go back and see that you should have. Now all the money that you just gave away, you’ve got to pay up again. Internal controls are the only way to save yourself out of a hole.

How To Negotiate Voluntary Disclosure Agreements

Talk to me about how you help clients negotiate Voluntary Disclosure Agreements.

Voluntary disclosures are not everything that they’re cracked up to be. We do them. A VDA, Voluntary Disclosure Agreement, you won’t get out of the sales tax that you should have collected. You’re going to have to pay it. What the VDA does is I go to the state and say, “I’ve got a client, anonymous, because I’m not telling them who you are.

They should be paying you $100,000 in sales tax for the past five years. They screwed up. They didn’t know, but they’re coming forward now because they discovered the problem, and they want to pay and get current.” We can get rid of the penalties. We can get rid of the interest. You’re just going to pay the tax. Going forward, you’ll be compliant.

This is strictly on physical product sales?

In New York State, maintaining a physical property, cleaning a fish tank, is a taxable service in the state of New York. They are maintaining physical, tangible property.

Home services, landscaping, housekeeping, home repair, those are taxable services?

I would have to dig deeper into it. The one I looked up specifically was cleaning a fish tank. Landscaping, you’ve got to buy the trees. You’re going to pay sales tax on those. You’re going to buy the flowers. You’re going to pay sales tax on those. Now, putting them in, is that sales taxable? I’d have to look in New York. In Colorado, it’s currently not.

Knowing New York, it’s probably taxable. We can have that offline conversation. I just find this all fascinating because, and this is why I love Zero to a Hundred, you can find out some stuff that you’re like, “What? I did not even know that that was a thing.” Even for me right now, my mind is blown because what we’ve just gone over with sales tax is something that I’m not at all used to experiencing or understanding.

 

Zero to a Hundred - Jarrod Guy Randolph | George Sleeman | Sales Tax

 

How To Get Ahead Of The Changes

From a service standpoint, a little bit from a product standpoint, and the clients that we work with, but this is super fascinating. Before we get into our fun rapid-fire section, talk to me about some of the trends or challenges that you’re seeing right now in the sales tax compliance arena and what business owners can do for 2025 to get ahead of changes that might be coming about.

To get ahead of the changes, you need to get compliant now. You are better off telling on yourself than letting them find you. Remember that, I don’t know if you’re in the military or not, but in the Army, it was better to beg for forgiveness than ask for permission. That’s true in sales tax. If you don’t know about it, find out about it.

If you get caught by the state, they are relentless, and there is no such thing as a VDA if they contact you first. If I contact them, now we can negotiate. There’s a difference. The one thing that needs to happen, and again, I jokingly said it, but there are very few of us out there that work with other companies. There’s a ton of sales tax accountants out there. I’m not saying there aren’t, but most of them are captive agents for insurance.

They’re with State Farm. They’re with American Family. They can only sell their product. Every retail outlet has people who work solely on sales tax, but you, me, and Johnny down the road, who are doing these small e-commerce businesses and not part of these big conglomerations, don’t have a sales tax-specific accountant. Find one. I don’t care if it’s me or not, find one.

Find somebody that you’re comfortable with, somebody that has the knowledge, the expertise, the experience to do that, and get them to look over your sales and see where are you lagging? What is your exposure? I can tell you right now, it’s going to cost you around $15,000 to get an exposure analysis done. My client that is owing all that money to Illinois would have saved a lot of money had they spent that money to find out what their exposure is. Illinois has reciprocity with quite a few states. You think they don’t talk to each other?

Answering Rapid-Fire Questions

It is the government, always trying to collect their taxes. We will leave that at that. George, it is fascinating what you gave us in terms of how to look at our businesses for something that seems really small and nuanced, and the impact that it could have on our bottom line. To all of our audience members out there, we need to make sure that you are sales tax compliant. Number one, if you’re selling a product, and frankly, if you have a service, you might want to check and make sure that you’re compliant on your service as well. George, before we wrap up, we’re going to do our little rapid-fire section. Are you ready, my friend?

As ready as I’m going to be, I guess.

Who truly wins the race, rabbit or turtle?

I’m going to tell you the turtle does, but the turtle has to have some jackrabbit legs.

I love that.

You want to go slow because you need to make sure that every i is dotted and t is crossed, but you got do it as quick as you can.

I love it. It is a zombie apocalypse. You have to get out of your home and protect your family. What would be your weapon of choice?

AR-15, .30-06, .308, and a machete.

You’re prepared, and if it’s a zombie apocalypse, I want to be around you.

I have yardage markers on my driveway.

You’re going to teach me how to build up my arsenal then. What is one of your favorite quotes in business?

That’s a tough one because there are so many good ones out there.

Give me one of your top quotes as a business leader that you think other business leaders should abide by.

I don’t know if it’s a quote as much as it is a philosophy that I have.

Go for it.

Every person is your only client when you’re talking to them. You’re not my only client, but right now, as we’re talking, you’re my only client.

I love that. That’s awesome. That’s powerful. Is there a book that you would recommend that our audience of owner-operators, entrepreneurs read that could help them advance in their business?

There was a book that I finished reading not too long ago. I didn’t finish reading it, I paged through it, and gave a shoutout to this company that provides it. It was the 2024 Tax Code. If you don’t know the deductions, you’re not going to get them because you’ll miss them.

Either read the tax code or hire the right tax professional.

Hire the right tax firm. I have two companies. I do sales tax with TMTY, but I also do income tax because we are married, basically, at the hip.

Give me three money-saving tactics that our audience can employ for 2025 to add to their bottom line.

Get professional help in areas where you do not know what you are doing wrong. Share on X

Get professional help in the areas where you don’t know what you’re doing wrong. With my company that does bookkeeping, if you hired us to do bookkeeping, the amount of money that you pay us for bookkeeping will probably be less than the taxes that you would save by having screwed-up books. It may not be this year. It might be five years from now when you get the audit. It may not be that.

Number two, don’t buy every asset that you can possibly think of at the end of the year because, “I have $100,000 in profit, and I’m going to pay $20,000 in taxes.” If you want to spend $40,000 on a truck that’s going to save you $5,000 in taxes, didn’t you just take $35,000 out of your own pocket? The final one, never buy a house for tax purposes. Same principle. You might be able to itemize. You might be able to take that home interest off, but the amount of home interest that you take off is only going to lower your income in that bracket. Why pay $25,000 in mortgage interest to save $5,000 in taxes? Doesn’t make sense.

Very good advice.

Buy a house, don’t get me wrong, but not for tax purposes.

Last question. Give us two key people in your life that helped you get to where you are and build the success that you have in your career.

My parents. The reason I say that, my stepdad and I, we didn’t see eye to eye at all. Every Easter when I was growing up, we were out at the dirt pile transplanting trees for the garden house, greenhouse, the nursery that we owned as a family but it taught me that every Easter, I had to be out there doing that, or the family didn’t need me. The work ethic that it instilled in me, drove me to where I am today. Like I said, I own two companies. I can honestly stand here and tell you, I have never not had two jobs in my entire life from the time I was sixteen on.

Closing Words And Contact Information

I love it. That’s awesome. George, before we bid you adieu, please tell the audience where they can connect with you.

You can call me directly. Here you go,  . Leave a message. Tell my receptionist where you heard us, and we’ll get back to you as quickly as we can. You can email me at George@TMTYLLC.com or visit the website TMTLLC.com.

George Sleeman, thank you for joining us on Zero to a Hundred.

It has been an absolute pleasure, Jarrod. I look forward to maybe talking to you again on another podcast.

 

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About George Sleeman

Zero to a Hundred - Jarrod Guy Randolph | George Sleeman | Sales TaxWith dual Bachelor’s degrees in Criminal Justice and Accounting, over 35 years of individual and business tax and accounting experience, and a Dave Ramsey ELP endorsement, George pours his heart and soul into an unwavering commitment to providing his clients with accurate, affordable, and accountable business and sales tax law compliance services.
After, George was approached by one of his clients, who requested his assistance in filing an out-of-state sales tax return. George agreed to give it a shot and then taught himself how to file the out-of-state sales tax return. In doing so, George discovered a need for sales tax and business report filing services that had yet been satisfied because most accountants at that time would only file returns for the state in which they conducted business. From that point on, TMTY, LLC has pivoted and evolved their business model to meet the needs of business owners, in accordance with the diverse requirements of the ever-changing Secretaries of State and Departments of Revenue rules and regulations, across the USA.
George is a straightforward man who values honesty and integrity and it shows in his interactions with his staff and clients as he aims to bridge the gap between sales tax law compliance and business law compliance in the niche work of USA and international e-Commerce.