Open letter to employees

[rw.sutton]

Subject: A great letter

To All My Valued Employees,

There have been some rumblings around the office about the future of

this company, and more specifically, your job. As you know, the economy

has changed for the worse and presents many challenges. However, the

good news is this: The economy doesn't pose a threat to your job.

What does threaten your job however, is the changing political

landscape in this country. Of course, as your employer, I am forbidden

to tell you whom to vote for - it is against the law to discriminate

based on political affiliation, race, creed, religion, etc.

Please vote for who you think will serve your interests the best.

However, let me tell you some little tidbits of fact which might help

you decide what is in your best interest. First, while it is easy to

spew rhetoric that casts employers against employees, you have to

understand that for every business owner there is a back story.

This back story is often neglected and overshadowed by what you see and

hear. Sure, you see me park my Mercedes outside. You saw my big home at

last years Christmas party. I'm sure all these flashy icons of luxury

conjure up some idealized thoughts about my life. However, what you

don't see is the back story.

I started this company 12 years ago. At that time, I lived in a 300

square foot studio apartment for 3 years. My entire living space was

converted into an office so I could put forth 100% effort into building

a company, which by the way, would eventually employ you.

My diet consisted of Ramen Pride noodles because every dollar I spent

went back into this company. I drove a rusty Toyota Corolla with a

defective transmission. I didn't have time to date. Often times, I

stayed home on weekends, while my friends went out drinking and

partying. In fact, I was married to my business -- hard work,

discipline, and sacrifice.

Meanwhile, my friends got jobs. They worked 40 hours a week and made a

modest $50K a year and spent every dime they earned. They drove flashy

cars and lived in expensive homes and wore fancy designer clothes.

Instead of hitting Nordstrom's for the latest hot fashion item, I was

trolling through the Goodwill store extracting any clothing item that

didn't look like it was birthed in the 70's.

My friends refinanced their mortgages and lived a life of luxury. I,

however, did not. I put my time, my money, and my life into a business

--- with a vision that eventually, some day, I too, will be able to

afford these luxuries my friends supposedly had.

So, while you physically arrive at the office at 9 am, mentally check

in at about noon, and then leave at 5 pm, I don't. There is no "off"

button for me. When you leave the office, you are done and you have a

weekend all to yourself. I unfortunately do not have the freedom. I

eat, ****, and breathe this company every minute of the day. There is

no rest. There is no weekend. There is no happy hour. Every day this

business is attached to me like a 1 day old baby.

You, of course, only see the fruits of that garden -- the nice house,

the Mercedes, the vacations... You never realize the back story and the

sacrifices I've made. Now, the economy is falling apart and I, the guy

that made all the right decisions and saved his money, have to bail out

all the people who didn't.

The people that overspent their paychecks suddenly feel entitled to the

same luxuries that I earned and sacrificed a decade of my life for.

Yes, business ownership has its benefits but the price I've paid is

steep and not without wounds. Unfortunately, the cost of running this

business, and employing you, is starting to eclipse the threshold of

marginal benefit and let me tell you why:

I am being taxed to death and the government thinks I don't pay enough.

I have state taxes. Federal taxes. Property taxes. Sales and use taxes.

Payroll taxes. Workers compensation taxes. Unemployment taxes. Taxes on

taxes. I have to hire a tax man to manage all these taxes and then

guess what? I have to pay taxes for employing him. Government mandates

and regulations and all the accounting that goes with it, now occupy

most of my time. On Oct 15th, I wrote a check to the US Treasury for

$288,000 for quarterly taxes. You know what my "stimulus" check was?

Zero. Nada. Zilch.

The question I have is this: Who is stimulating the economy? Me, the

guy who has provided 14 people good paying jobs and serves over

2,200,000 people per year with a flourishing business? Or, the single

mother sitting at home pregnant with her fourth child waiting for her

next welfare check?

Obviously, government feels the latter is the economic stimulus of this

country. The fact is, if I deducted (Read: Stole) 50% of your paycheck

you'd quit and you wouldn't work here. I mean, why should you? That's

nuts. Who wants to get rewarded only 50% of their hard work? Well, I

agree which is why your job is in jeopardy. Here is what many of you

don't understand ... to stimulate the economy you need to stimulate

what runs the economy. Had suddenly government mandated to me that I

didn't need to pay taxes, guess what? Instead of depositing that

$288,000 into the Washington black-hole, I would have spent it, hired

more employees, and generated substantial economic growth. My employees

would have enjoyed the wealth of that tax cut in the form of promotions

and better salaries. But you can forget it now.

When you have a comatose man on the verge of death, you don't

defibrillate and shock his thumb thinking that will bring him back to

life, do you? Or, do you defibrillate his heart? Business is at the

heart of America and always has been. To restart it, you must stimulate

it, not kill it. Suddenly, the power brokers in Washington believe the

mud of America are the essential drivers of the American economic

engine.

Nothing could be further from the truth and this is the type of change

you can keep. So where am I going with all this? It's quite simple. If

any new taxes are levied on me, or my company, my reaction will be

swift and simple. I fire you. I fire your co-workers. You can then

plead with the government to pay for your mortgage, your SUV, and your

child's future. Frankly, it isn't my problem any more. Then, I will

close this company down, move to another country, and retire.

You see, I'm done. I'm done with a country that penalizes the

productive and gives to the unproductive. My motivation to work and to

provide jobs will be destroyed, and with it, will be my citizenship.

While tax cuts to 95% of America sounds great on paper, don't forget

the back story: If there is no job, there is no income to tax. A tax

cut on zero dollars is zero. So, when you make decision to vote, ask

yourself, who understands the economics of business ownership and who

doesn't? Whose policies will endanger your job? Answer those questions

and you should know who might be the one capable of saving your job.

While the media wants to tell you "It's the economy Stupid" I'm telling

you it isn't.

If you lose your job, it won't be at the hands of the economy; it will

be at the hands of a political hurricane that swept through this

country, steamrolled the Constitution, and will have changed its

landscape forever. If that happens, you can find me in the South

Caribbean sitting on a beach, retired, and with no employees to worry

about.

Signed, Your boss,

HOpe I put this in the right section,,it was my opinion, if not, please move it,,Thanks

[p71rock]

Good Job Boss!

[The Machine]

This was posted a few weeks back .... it's a good letter, well written and very true.....

[rw.sutton]

Im a small business owner, 4 years ago we would build appr. 30 homes a year, and had 11 full time employees, plus part time ones that worked on the weekend. Today we employ none and build appr 2 to 3 homes a year. using all part time subs, and I doubt if many of them pay their taxes. Im not a bully, but when times changed we had to also.

Dropping back to 2 to 3 homes a year, has been paying the bills, but the peace of mind I have now, is unbelieveable. Heres to hoping an RV, happens soon..

[Danan]

The problem with the current way taxes are handled, which this letter doesn't even mention, is capital gains. The super rich aren't paying themselves 50 million dollars a year in salary, which would be heavily taxed as income, they're making practically all their money via capital gains, which is only taxed at 15%. So when guys like Buffet make 50 million and only pay 17% tax on it, and I make 1/500th that much, and pay 30%, it seems pretty bogus to me.

And I really dislike the tone of this email, e.g. "If any new taxes are levied on me, or my company, my reaction will be swift and simple. I fire you." First of all, just the message is disgusting. Someone making millions of dollars a year that is probably paying less tax (as a percentage) than you or I are, is telling lower or middle class people that he'll fire them if they tax his capital gains at 17% instead of 15%? That's disgusting, and bullying. Second of all, I doubt anyone that's making millions of dollars off a business is going to cut his nose off to spite his own face. It's an empty threat, presented in a reprehensible manner.

I doubt seriously that you own your business, or you would have understood the letter. until you are a multi millionaire or billionaire, you don't get those breaks. As a small business owner, you put every dime back into the business (hoping that you will be in the big league) unfortunately ALL the taxes small businessess have to pay is draining. So, that employee that should have gotten a raise, won't because we have to pay taxes and more taxes. So, unless you own a business don't think he is negative because he is tired of paying out and not reaping the benefits. in fact most small business owners make less than their top employess, if you put an hourly wage to the hours worked.

[DinarMillionaire]

This guy says he pays a million in taxes a year, you don't think he's a millionaire?

I'm not saying small business owners should be heavily taxed, I'm saying multi multi millionaires should be taxed more. Why should the Buffets of the world pay less as a percentage than the middle class guys just trying to pay their mortgage? Buffet even agrees with me.

Buffet is an exception to the rule. He's not a small businessman. He makes his money different than most and can't be used as the barometer for the argument presented here.

Obviously, you are not a business owner, neither am I, but I get the concept. You are either a Socialist that believes in taking from the haves (hard workers) and giving to the have not's (don't want to work hard) or a government recipient of public assistance. Start a business and see if your perspective doesn't change.

[smee2]

For most of my working life I was a business owner. That meant that in the beginning I was also a part time weekend wage slave. My employees got paid, in full and on time, but I could not put groceries in the old lunch bag or pay my own rent. I had to work for someone else to do that. And my business still had to pay taxes first. I always came last.

Once business was picking up it was a struggle to balance the existing situation and the desire, need, to expand. My employees deserved a raise and more security with a health plan and stuff like that and that meant growing the business. They didn't have the sleepless nights trying to figure out how to accomplish this, I did. And the taxes always had to be paid first. I always came last.

At one point I wondered what in the H*** I was doing all this for. I had been turned down for a mortgage. I was caught up in the issue of paying my rent to me, by owning my own home. I had in the previous few months had to confirm employment for two of my employees who were applying for a mortgage so they could purchase their own homes, and they were accepted since they were working for a company that had existed for several years, was not in debt, and paid its taxes first. I always came last, even in the issue of a mortgage, and could not get one. My landlord was making a bundle in an investment I could not handle myself.

Eventually the insanity of paying employees, suppliers, subsidiary agents, and of course the tax man, first, in full, got to be a little too much. I sold the business off and let someone else handle that particular headache.

The new owner, a person who had never owned a business before and saw it as a way to be "on top" of the pile rather than on the bottom, and just a wage slave, did not understand how it all works. He paid himself first. He leased a Lexus while I was still driving a more-than-twenty-year-old Dodge Coronet..He went out and put a second mortgage on his house, for which he had secured a first mortgage while he was working for someone else, and put the money into a summer cottage on the lake for his family. To keep up appearances he would schedule meetings with potential clients so that it became a business lunch, at the ritziest pub in the area. He signed up his kids in dance lessons, and music lessons, and his wife became a spa member. He was, after all, a wage earner turned boss who was just following his "knowledge" about what a boss is and how a boss operates.

With these changes of his, and this new boss' attitude towards "doing business", "my" business proved unable to continue in the tradition I had established and within eighteen months had folded.

At the time of the demise of the business he had to sell off the cottage by the lake, his Lexus, his original home, the cars he had leased for his wife and daughter, keeping only the beater his son had been driving. The lessons, spa and business lunches were a thing of the past and this man learned in a hurry what it is like to be a business owner, and therefore, when the business folded, not entitled to unemployment insurance.

As a man in his mid forties, he was suddenly unemployed and unemployable. He had no good referrences since he had worked for "himself". His family life was suffering and I truly felt sorry for him for all he was going through.

And how did he react to all this? It was all the fault of the government! The tax man! The stupid rules and silly expectations. His employees had been paid only part wages for as long as they would hold out and that was only about a month and then they left for other employment. He had nothing and worse he was then known by his credit rating as a deadbeat. All in under two years at the helm of a business that had grown and been prosperous in terms of supporting itself, and its employees, and the government tax man, for almost eighteen years.

More than a dozen wage earners suddenly found themselves out of work, no money coming in, and back wages still owing. Suppliers whose yearly sales projections included this company's business suddenly found they were short by over a million dollars worth of business yearly, and stuck holding the bag for a few hundred thousand in bad debt. A landlord in and industrial park found he was suddenly faced not only with an empty space he needed to rent out but also holding the bag for three months in back rent. This is just an example of what happened to the periferal contacts of this particular business.

A business that had started out of the basement of my home, with two people full time and a few part timers, and had grown to become one of the supports of the local financial community, and minor but noticable influence on certain international market participants, had, in that relatively short space of a year and a half, disappeared from the scene, leaving a certain amount of chaos behind.

Why? Because a well-meaning but totally unknowing person thought that business was what he saw on the surface. He was absolutely ignorant of the realities of "doing business"

In my time with this business, I quickly learned that I could not even share the responsibility of taking the bank deposit to the bank by allowing an employee to do it for me. Invariably they would take a peek, we are after all a curious species, and see what was being deposited and think the business, and the business owner, were rich!!!! I could, in the beginning, make a weekly deposit of, oh say, ten thousand dollars. Being so busy being the "owner" of the business, it was economically expedient for me to pay one of my employees to go to the bank, stand in line, and make the deposit. But when they saw that the deposit came close to, or exceeded ten thousand dollars, they wondered why they were only making twenty percent above minimum wage, while essentially being asked to be an errand runner, at that point. Later I found that I had to have all of that handled by a bookkeeper. If one of my employees, even making close to seventy percent over minimum wage, saw the amount of the weekly deposit, at that point over the hundred thousand mark with more than a dozen employees and a rolodex (before computers, look it up) full of suppliers and agents to pay, they would come back to the office and ask for a raise. Don't laugh, this happened more than once.

Anyway, the point of this long and you may have found boring rant, is to let those of you who have not been business owners know that it isn't what you see that is the business. As a business owner you find the business takes over your entire life. The fellow who bought my business sent his family off to that cottage he bought, and stayed in the city on his own to handle the "business" things that cannot be ignored just because they happen on a holiday long weekend!

And now it seems my train of thought has stalled one station short of its destination, 'cause I don't remember what else I was going to say, if anything.

So, signing off ...

smee2

[rw.sutton]

For most of my working life I was a business owner. That meant that in the beginning I was also a part time weekend wage slave. My employees got paid, in full and on time, but I could not put groceries in the old lunch bag or pay my own rent. I had to work for someone else to do that. And my business still had to pay taxes first. I always came last.

Once business was picking up it was a struggle to balance the existing situation and the desire, need, to expand. My employees deserved a raise and more security with a health plan and stuff like that and that meant growing the business. They didn't have the sleepless nights trying to figure out how to accomplish this, I did. And the taxes always had to be paid first. I always came last.

At one point I wondered what in the H*** I was doing all this for. I had been turned down for a mortgage. I was caught up in the issue of paying my rent to me, by owning my own home. I had in the previous few months had to confirm employment for two of my employees who were applying for a mortgage so they could purchase their own homes, and they were accepted since they were working for a company that had existed for several years, was not in debt, and paid its taxes first. I always came last, even in the issue of a mortgage, and could not get one. My landlord was making a bundle in an investment I could not handle myself.

Eventually the insanity of paying employees, suppliers, subsidiary agents, and of course the tax man, first, in full, got to be a little too much. I sold the business off and let someone else handle that particular headache.

The new owner, a person who had never owned a business before and saw it as a way to be "on top" of the pile rather than on the bottom, and just a wage slave, did not understand how it all works. He paid himself first. He leased a Lexus while I was still driving a more-than-twenty-year-old Dodge Coronet..He went out and put a second mortgage on his house, for which he had secured a first mortgage while he was working for someone else, and put the money into a summer cottage on the lake for his family. To keep up appearances he would schedule meetings with potential clients so that it became a business lunch, at the ritziest pub in the area. He signed up his kids in dance lessons, and music lessons, and his wife became a spa member. He was, after all, a wage earner turned boss who was just following his "knowledge" about what a boss is and how a boss operates.

With these changes of his, and this new boss' attitude towards "doing business", "my" business proved unable to continue in the tradition I had established and within eighteen months had folded.

At the time of the demise of the business he had to sell off the cottage by the lake, his Lexus, his original home, the cars he had leased for his wife and daughter, keeping only the beater his son had been driving. The lessons, spa and business lunches were a thing of the past and this man learned in a hurry what it is like to be a business owner, and therefore, when the business folded, not entitled to unemployment insurance.

As a man in his mid forties, he was suddenly unemployed and unemployable. He had no good referrences since he had worked for "himself". His family life was suffering and I truly felt sorry for him for all he was going through.

And how did he react to all this? It was all the fault of the government! The tax man! The stupid rules and silly expectations. His employees had been paid only part wages for as long as they would hold out and that was only about a month and then they left for other employment. He had nothing and worse he was then known by his credit rating as a deadbeat. All in under two years at the helm of a business that had grown and been prosperous in terms of supporting itself, and its employees, and the government tax man, for almost eighteen years.

More than a dozen wage earners suddenly found themselves out of work, no money coming in, and back wages still owing. Suppliers whose yearly sales projections included this company's business suddenly found they were short by over a million dollars worth of business yearly, and stuck holding the bag for a few hundred thousand in bad debt. A landlord in and industrial park found he was suddenly faced not only with an empty space he needed to rent out but also holding the bag for three months in back rent. This is just an example of what happened to the periferal contacts of this particular business.

A business that had started out of the basement of my home, with two people full time and a few part timers, and had grown to become one of the supports of the local financial community, and minor but noticable influence on certain international market participants, had, in that relatively short space of a year and a half, disappeared from the scene, leaving a certain amount of chaos behind.

Why? Because a well-meaning but totally unknowing person thought that business was what he saw on the surface. He was absolutely ignorant of the realities of "doing business"

In my time with this business, I quickly learned that I could not even share the responsibility of taking the bank deposit to the bank by allowing an employee to do it for me. Invariably they would take a peek, we are after all a curious species, and see what was being deposited and think the business, and the business owner, were rich!!!! I could, in the beginning, make a weekly deposit of, oh say, ten thousand dollars. Being so busy being the "owner" of the business, it was economically expedient for me to pay one of my employees to go to the bank, stand in line, and make the deposit. But when they saw that the deposit came close to, or exceeded ten thousand dollars, they wondered why they were only making twenty percent above minimum wage, while essentially being asked to be an errand runner, at that point. Later I found that I had to have all of that handled by a bookkeeper. If one of my employees, even making close to seventy percent over minimum wage, saw the amount of the weekly deposit, at that point over the hundred thousand mark with more than a dozen employees and a rolodex (before computers, look it up) full of suppliers and agents to pay, they would come back to the office and ask for a raise. Don't laugh, this happened more than once.

Anyway, the point of this long and you may have found boring rant, is to let those of you who have not been business owners know that it isn't what you see that is the business. As a business owner you find the business takes over your entire life. The fellow who bought my business sent his family off to that cottage he bought, and stayed in the city on his own to handle the "business" things that cannot be ignored just because they happen on a holiday long weekend!

And now it seems my train of thought has stalled one station short of its destination, 'cause I don't remember what else I was going to say, if anything.

So, signing off ...

smee2

Right on,,My friend..

[Lutie]

The problem with the current way taxes are handled, which this letter doesn't even mention, is capital gains. The super rich aren't paying themselves 50 million dollars a year in salary, which would be heavily taxed as income, they're making practically all their money via capital gains, which is only taxed at 15%. So when guys like Buffet make 50 million and only pay 17% tax on it, and I make 1/500th that much, and pay 30%, it seems pretty bogus to me.

And I really dislike the tone of this email, e.g. "If any new taxes are levied on me, or my company, my reaction will be swift and simple. I fire you." First of all, just the message is disgusting. Someone making millions of dollars a year that is probably paying less tax (as a percentage) than you or I are, is telling lower or middle class people that he'll fire them if they tax his capital gains at 17% instead of 15%? That's disgusting, and bullying. Second of all, I doubt anyone that's making millions of dollars off a business is going to cut his nose off to spite his own face. It's an empty threat, presented in a reprehensible manner.

Wow !! You still just don't get it do you?