Bought the assets of a business (website URL, brand name, customer list) but started a new LLC. Bought the assets for a small amount (less than $15k), we didn’t want to buy the corporation/company because we didn’t want to deal with surprise liabilities, etc.
Anyway CDTFA (california tax) is chasing the owner of the original company for what I imagine are small potato amounts if we bought the assets for less than $15k. Maybe he’s unresponsive so CDTFA is bugging us instead. I’ve told CDTFA we don’t work with that guy anymore, he retained is corporation, we only bought assets and operating our own LLC and the transaction between us has been closed and completed. CDTFA says we needed some tax clearance before transfer of ownership (weird if we didn’t buy the corp). CDTFA says we’re on the hook for garnishment. We’re a micro business in startup mode don’t know why they are wasting time and resources on us for something we don’t even owe them.
Yeah, it’s California.
I bought a plane from a guy who lived in California - I flew commercial to meet him in Vegas, then I flew the plane all the way back home to nearly the Atlantic ocean.
Of course California threatened to sue me because I wasn’t paying them taxes on the aircraft, even though I don’t live there and I’ve never flown the plane there. Ended up getting it fixed, but from what I can tell California will go after any revenue they think they have even a tangential claim to, and if they think you can be intimidated, tricked, or otherwise forced to pay then they have no problem doing so.
Wow that sucks, seems like the seller in California should’ve been on the hook for that one. Maybe your home state when you register the plan there. Weird that California went after you.
I definitely got the intimidation vibes. I don’t even know what the other guy’s tax liability is or where I can get more info about it and next thing I was hearing was that our business will get garnished. I asked if she could explain what the basis was and if she could also send a document showing it and she refused to talk to me to explain it and said it’ll just arrive in the mail.