By Rodger Digilio
alexandrianews.org
Alexandria’s Business License Tax is due on Monday, March 1. Business owners like myself are now scrambling to fill out the newer and more complex forms and to find the cash to pay the bill.
In another example of the increasing complexity of life in the 21st century, the City decided to collect a great deal more data about businesses that are licensed here. Beside the Gross Receipts Form and the Business Owned Autos Form, there is a new form on which you must list owners, partners, officers, registered agents, managers and other such persons associated with the top ownership and management of the entity.
There could be a reason for this. I’m not sure what it is. The Business License Application Form seems to have a lot of this information on it already, and, presumably, that is still on file somewhere in the bowels of City Hall.
The City then wants all sorts of information on business partners, officers and other personnel. Some of this is certainly not objectionable unless the City is planning to spam our inboxes. One piece of required information is objectionable, at least to me: Alexandria wants the Social Security numbers of all these folks.
The City claims that Virginia and Federal law gives it the right to have such information for business tax purposes. It certainly is if I have a business that operates under my Social Security number. If, however, I have a business that operates under its own tax ID then it certainly is not.
As I age I try to avoid paranoia but it still creeps in now and then. The only reason I can figure out that the City would need my Social Security number, in addition to my business tax id, is if they want to arrest me or snoop in my private finances, which have nothing to do with my business. I discovered a few years ago that you can’t get an arrest warrant without a date of birth or a social security number for the individual to be arrested. It actually makes sense to avoid wrongful arrest.
Why would the City want to arrest me? Perhaps I may commit some crime involving the business license tax in the future, and, in this brave new world we are all guilty until we can prove ourselves innocent.
The City has promised to keep your Social Security numbers confidential, but this sounds very familiar. They have indicated no process for doing so and the Business License Tax people seem skilled at misplacing returns.
Do you think business owners and officers of corporations are more or less likely to have money? I bet you think they do have money. I bet scam artists do as well, and stealing a list of Social Security numbers from the Business License Tax Office would yield a great bunch of identities (Perhaps thinking like this is one reason the City is so desperate to have my Social Security number).
Have the City Manager or City Council considered the liability if Alexandria fails to protect all this sensitive information? Of course they haven’t. The bureaucrats want ever increasing amounts of information and neither they nor their elected masters ever think of the unintended consequences.
Someone must have spoken up because the latest City missive on Business License Taxes that you can read on alexandrianews.org says that even though they are entitled to have the Social Security number and even though they have asked for it, if you believe your security would be compromised by giving it out you don’t have to provide it.
Well I had come to that conclusion all by myself because I listen to the fine officers in the Financial Crimes unit of Alexandria’s Police Department. I have attended their seminars and they always tell me never to give out my Social Security number. So, I chose not to give it to the City and I urge all of you not to either.
Perhaps the City will rethink this Big Brother Policy but we must each be in charge of out own financial security. It is safer to JUST SAY NO!
By the way, in case you are wondering how the current political phenomenon called the Tea Party is spreading like wildfire across the USA you have just had a great example. Governments at all levels are giving us less reason to trust them. In this case the City is no exception.