New York SBDC Research Network

By Sharon St. John, The Mohawk Valley Small Business Development Center, SUNY Institute of Technology, Utica, NY One of my colleagues posed a question about a New York State for-profit business that would contract with banks so that after a foreclosure, the contractors would come in to clean, change locks, mow the lawn, and keep the property maintained until the bank sells it again. Should they be registered as sales tax vendors since what they're doing seems to fall into maintenance and repair? I noted that there are two NYS publications that I recommend for all my clients who are in any kind of construction business. Publication 750, A Guide To Sales Tax in New York State (PDF) , notes on page 20 under Specifically Enumerated Services: "maintaining, servicing or repairing real property both inside and outside of buildings (for example, cleaning, painting, gardening, snow plowing, trash removal and general repairs)" are subject to sales tax. My conclusion is that the com

Over the weekend, I had to bring a lawnmower AND a DVD player to be repaired. In both cases, I fear that the cost will be dangerously close to simply buying a new one. Not a very environmentally-friendly deal. Which is why I liked this article from the Nov. 8th New York Times so much. It reveals a number of websites where you can go and get ready advice on repairing an iPod (CrunchGear.com), a Mac (macfixit.com), home theatres (avsforum.com), gaming systems (fixya.com), copiers, PDAs . . . and all the other toys of life. In many cases, you'll get a variety of options, specific instructions, and the means to save a bunch of money vis a vis replacement parts. As an extension of the Third Place post I wrote a while ago, it's clear that these online repair forums are a replacement for local repair shops (which the article laments as a near-extinct species). Here at the library, we frequently visit online forums to get answers to questions relating to the software we use.