Census Bureau for Business

[Ox]

Y'all ever git this questionnaire?

Mrs. O was trying to fill it out yesterdee and asking me questions and telling me what it's asking, and for my nickel it sounds like any pertinent info that they could want is already disclosed in our IRS filings.

Then there are some (?) other questions about inventory and whatnot.

I told her that the answer to all fields should be either "see IRS filings" or "Nunyas".

Accountant says there is a $5000 fine for not complying.

Apparently this is a random thing, and not sure that this has ever come to our door before.
Any of you pushing back on this?

I will likely be pinging the NFIB about this.


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Think Snow Eh!
Ox

 

[jaguar36]

I don't think you have any choice in the matter, as your account says, there are hefty fines if you ignore it.

Question 8 on the FAQ here is about why they don't get it from the IRS.

 

[Ox]

My point:

A) Much of it IS available vie the IRS
B) The rest is pretty much none of their business.

Feels like Big Brother over reaching for no real reason:

A) Just to see how much they can crawl up our ass and how much push-back they receive for it;
B) To justify more jobs on the their side of the tax hurdle. (private industry makes it, while Gov jobs consume it)


Mrs O said that she understands my view 100%, but asked how bad I want to die on this hill....



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Think Snow Eh!
Ox

 

[Garwood]

My point:

A) Much of it IS available vie the IRS
B) The rest is pretty much none of their business.

Feels like Big Brother over reaching for no real reason:

A) Just to see how much they can crawl up our ass and how much push-back they receive for it;
B) To justify more jobs on the their side of the tax hurdle. (private industry makes it, while Gov jobs consume it)


Mrs O said that she understands my view 100%, but asked how bad I want to die on this hill....



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Think Snow Eh!
Ox

I shitcanned one and never heard a thing. It's not like they send it registered mail.

 

[VTM]

Y'all ever git this questionnaire?

Mrs. O was trying to fill it out yesterdee and asking me questions and telling me what it's asking, and for my nickel it sounds like any pertinent info that they could want is already disclosed in our IRS filings.

Then there are some (?) other questions about inventory and whatnot.

I told her that the answer to all fields should be either "see IRS filings" or "Nunyas".

Accountant says there is a $5000 fine for not complying.

Apparently this is a random thing, and not sure that this has ever come to our door before.
Any of you pushing back on this?

I will likely be pinging the NFIB about this.


---------------------

Think Snow Eh!
Ox

I shitcanned one and never heard a thing. It's not like they send it registered mail.

I been hearing about em for 3 or 4 years now. But never actually seen one. Must keep getting lost In the mail. You know USPS ain't what it used to be.

 

[Bondo]

I just received my second notice, but I don't recall getting the original notice.

I can't wait to fill it out as I'm assuming they are going to ask me a huge amount of questions trying to get me to answer things differently then what theh know.

I think this will end up being a see my previous returns for any questions

 

[BOB-OO]

Think the penalty for not answering is big, check out the one for providing false information. 269 questions mostly focused on becoming more green, would take most people the better part of a week. So I've heard as I never received one.

 

[jaguar36]

Think the penalty for not answering is big, check out the one for providing false information. 269 questions mostly focused on becoming more green, would take most people the better part of a week. So I've heard as I never received one.

Its not at all focused on becoming more green. Its focused on understanding how much R&D is being done in the US, by what kind of companies, who's funding it (foreign/domestic, private/public) with how many and what kind of employees. You can look at it yourself here (assuming the link works). They claim it will take 52 minutes on average to complete, which seems... optimistic.

I was bored this morning waiting for a job to run, so I looked into the history of it. Its a new survey as of 2018, which is why you may not of heard of it before. It's conducted by the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, which is a 55 person goverment agency that basically does this and a few other surveys to try and figure out how much and what kind of science and R&D is being done in the US.

How does the government get the right to force you to fill out a lengthy survey? Well our elected representatives decided that the data was worth the cost to collect (assuming they understood what they were signing, and didn't have other reasons for signing it) It seems like there have been a bunch of bills passed that authorized it, from the original National Science Foundation bill in 1950 to the most recent America Competes Act in 2010. In case your curious, this was passed by Unanimous consent in the Senate (meaning that they just asked if anyone objected to the bill passing and nobody said yes), and by a vote of 228-130 in the house (16 R and 212 D voted for it). If you don't like it, you can complain to your Senators or Representatives. You could also talk to the director of the National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, Emilda Rivers. Her contact info is readily available.

I see both sides of the story, sure looks like a pain in the ass to fill out, particularly if you want to be very accurate. On the other hand it also seems important to understand how much R&D is being done, by who and for what reasons.

 

[cnctoolcat]

Pay attention to the early wording in the cover letter. Because for the letter I've seen, compliance is not mandatory. It is worded sneaky to appear to be though!

The letter says: "your response is required so we can complete the research, blah, blah, blah."
But it does not say: "your response is required by law."

So it's not.

The accountant is FOS, he's just hoping to charge you a big bill to fill it out for your company...

ToolCat

 

[kb0thn]

Some of them are legally mandatory. We were getting a bunch from US Census Bureau. It seems that once you start doing your legal obligation of filling them in they mark you for a sucker willing to work for free for them and they start sending you more. It is ridiculous, because it adds up to multiple hours per month to do. Some of them I have my accountant do at $125 per hour.

After lots of being annoyed by it, I've taken a bare minimum attitude for them. We don't track a lot of stuff they want. I used to try to figure out the answer and spend time doing it. Now I just make a wild ass guess. I called in once and it was literally a statistician that answered the phone and I explained the situation and they said they understood and would remove us from whatever it was in the future. When they won't remove us, I provide answers the best I can produce in 15 seconds per question.

What has gotten me out of a lot of them is that we moved last year. Most of the surveys same to be keyed to an address. We are able to say that we are no longer at that address and have relocated to a new address in a new city. That gets us off the sampling list. I ended up getting in a bit of a fight with the state on one of those. Their only option was to fill in the survey for our location at old address or indicate that we had permanently closed. I said we moved and we weren't at the address they had listed. But we hadn't permanently closed. And that I didn't want to commit perjury be choosing one of those options. They verbally told me to mark permanently closed. I said put it in writing, which they eventually did.

Also try owning a farm. USDA sends long legally response required surveys annually. The last one was 16 pages long.

As I see it, they are quite literally taxes. They aren't taking my money directly, but they sure are taking my time. But congress authorized it like any other tax, so it is what it is.

Lots of hoops to jump through in life.

 

[cnctoolcat]

Some of them are legally mandatory. We were getting a bunch from US Census Bureau.

Just because the survey is from the US Census Bureau, does not mean that you are legally obligated to fill the survey out! The cover letter must clearly state the specific law ID number requiring you to do so, and the legal consequences of not filing it out.

Now, of course the official US Census survey every 10 years is required to be completed by law, by all US citizens.

But that's not what we're discussing here. Basically the government is wanting to conduct economic research, and rather than paying companies to fill out the surveys, they are sneakily wording them as if the law requires it.

Again, if it were required by law to complete, they have to list the specific law in the letter, and the legal consequences of ignoring it...

ToolCat

 

[Ox]

Did you open the link in Jag's post above?


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Think Snow Eh!
Ox

 

[DDoug]

Did you open the link in Jag's post above?


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Think Snow Eh!
Ox

How will you maintain Culpable Deniability then ?

 

[CarbideBob]

While part of the same government the census bureau has no access to your IRS filing or records.
Thinking so is just silly.
There are laws about this.
Yes I get asked... what is the big deal or worry? Things to hide?

 

[kb0thn]

While part of the same government the census bureau has no access to your IRS filing or records.
Thinking so is just silly.
There are laws about this.
Yes I get asked... what is the big deal or worry? Things to hide?

Note: I do do these where required.

But my beef is the time commitment. When I'm doing 60 to 80 hours a week, I don't look for hour long activities to add to my schedule. Even on the "surveys" that I think I can have my account do at $125 per hour, they still end up coming back to me for more information before they get submitted.

And there is the proprietary nature of some of the information. How much I am paying employees and what they are doing and how much impact COVID has and how much my rent is and all of that. Nice snapshot of information that probably gets sold to private companies and profited from.

-

We recently got a sales and use tax audit by our state. They have a very wide scope. Basically we were obligated to provide them to access on everything we bought and everything we sold. They wanted all of the information provided to them electronically so they could take it home. I wasn't comfortable with that. Every supplier, every customer, every part, everything all nicely packaged together. We elected to provide it to them on a computer in our office and the data had to stay on site. They still ended up sneaking some of it home and putting individual transactions in their audit report, which I didn't like. But far better than a nice ZIP file that would allow somebody to get all my customers and all my suppliers in one go.

 

[cnctoolcat]

Did you open the link in Jag's post above?

I did.

Again, clever wording by Uncle Sam's minions.

1.) "Is the survey mandatory? Yes."
All this means is the Census Bureau has to do the survey.

2.) "What is the penalty for not responding?" The two laws they list relate to the actual census population survey (mandated by the Constitution) every 10 years. The Bureau is assuming that any questionnaire they send out falls under these must-comply laws.

As a side note, the only penalty for not completing the 10-year census survey is that a census worker will be knocking on your door with the population questions.

Interesting how these surveys---which reveal about every private financial detail of these "wealthy" American businesses, started in 2015...

I'm the opposite of Nike: "Just Don't Do It"

ToolCat

 

[wmpy]

Its not at all focused on becoming more green. Its focused on understanding how much R&D is being done in the US, by what kind of companies, who's funding it (foreign/domestic, private/public) with how many and what kind of employees. You can look at it yourself here (assuming the link works). They claim it will take 52 minutes on average to complete, which seems... optimistic.

I filled out that census you linked to last fall. This new one that some of us have is the five-year economic census. See here:

2022 Economic Census

The Economic Census is the most comprehensive measure of the U.S. economy, providing industry and market statistics at the national, state, and local levels.

www.census.gov

This current census is very time-consuming compared to that other one. The back of the cover letter says that they estimate the time to fill it out being between 42 minutes and 5 hours 36 minutes. I'm guessing that a statistician came up with those numbers.

 

[wmpy]

I did.

Again, clever wording by Uncle Sam's minions.

1.) "Is the survey mandatory? Yes."
All this means is the Census Bureau has to do the survey.

2.) "What is the penalty for not responding?" The two laws they list relate to the actual census population survey (mandated by the Constitution) every 10 years. The Bureau is assuming that any questionnaire they send out falls under these must-comply laws.

As a side note, the only penalty for not completing the 10-year census survey is that a census worker will be knocking on your door with the population questions.

Interesting how these surveys---which reveal about every private financial detail of these "wealthy" American businesses, started in 2015...

I'm the opposite of Nike: "Just Don't Do It"

ToolCat

The cover letter for the census that I received states "Your response is required by law". How am I to interpret that other than that my response is required by law?

Also, where are you getting your claim that this was started in 2015? Here's a good read about the history of the economic census. I guess it dates back to 1810.

Economic Census - History - U.S. Census Bureau

The Census Bureau made the first economic inquiries in 1810 and continues to conduct an economic census in years ending in 2 and 7.

www.census.gov

 

[Modelman]

While it may only be a 55 man department, it looks like they are mining data to give those 87,000 new IRS agents something to do. I'd be careful that your answers don't contradict your tax return.

Dennis

 

[jamscal]

The cover letter for the census that I received states "Your response is required by law". How am I to interpret that other than that my response is required by law?

Because this is America...What is the definition of "response" ?

What is the definition of "is" ?