Business License, Shmizness License
Decatur Metro | May 11, 2010 | 3:49 pmTalk about not giving back to the community AT ALL.
According to a report in this afternoon’s AJC, 60 Mall of Georgia businesses were cited by Gwinnett Police today for operating without business licenses.
Among the 60 were many small, couldn’t-possibly-have-known-any-better shops like J.Crew, Aldo, Barnes & Noble, Talbots, Macy’s, Ann Taylor LOFT, Charlotte Russe, Swarovski Retail Ventures Limited, the Disney Store and Eddie Bauer.
The AJC has the full list.
Good to see the police are on such pressing cases. Imagine the chaos that would ensue if J Crew did not have a license!
Striped Polo-shirt Chaos.
This is a very bizarre story. Either I’m totally naive to the fact that most retail stores ignore the need to buy or renew business licenses or there’s a much larger something going on here. It seems like these large chain corporations would very quickly avoid situations like this because they aren’t worth the hassle for the relatively small amount of money it would cost a massive corporation to buy a license for a chain store. Also, what are the chances that all these stores with different owners would all decide not to pay for or renew their license? My guess would be that the chances are slim. There’s some larger element, I think, that the AJC hasn’t reported. I hope they write a more detailed story.
I’m guessing it’s more likely that Gwinett County made a clerical error than these businesses all collectively decided not to pay taxes.
Decided not to obtain business licenses, rather
I considered this too. But the fact that the businesses were first warned and then fined seems not to jive with this theory.
The warning part of that doesn’t make sense to me either. What are the chances that all those businesses would have been warned and also decided coincidentally not to pay the licenses? Either no one felt any reason to pay for licenses (which might mean that no one anywhere does — beyond the mall) or there’s some other factor that hasn’t been reported.
A good lawyer can make the case that by being allowed to operate without a license, they were in effect given de facto licenses.
That’s an interesting legal theory. Does it apply to all crimes?
here I go again …. isn’t a business license nothing more than another fee levied on businesses. It provides nothing other than putting a biz on the personal property tax radar.
Did you know if you get a biz license in Dekalb County you have to get a building permit as well.
Biz License = $175 and Building Permit = $172 total $347 WOWZA!!
Even if you are moving into a finished office and doing no construction or painting etc you still have to get a Building Permit ……
Seems a bit over the top to me
Well yeah, City government is basically setup to promote commerce. So taking in some fees for attracting that commerce seems pretty reasonable.
Yeah, because the Lord knows those businesses don’t pay anything else to the government for the privilege of engaging in the commerce that would be impossible witout government promotion. I mean, without Gwinnett County government, who would ever dare to sell me a polo shirt or a book? Gwinnett needs to license these businesses to protect me, right?
I see business licenses mostly as junk fees from city and county governments. If you have your professional license and you pay your taxes, that should cover it. Still, they are in place and the big retailers especially should have known better. Certainly no one in dear old Decatur would do such a thing. Horrors.
Well, I will like to go to DeKalb and argue this about paying yearly car taxes, renewing driver’s license, etc – they will laugh in my face.
If I were a betting man, my money would be on a license office snafu. As a former retailer for large chair stores in malls, I know we always received a notice from the countywhen it was up for renewal. This was simply passed on to the corporate office to handle…never done at local store level. These chains would have no interest, monetarily or otherwise, to avoid paying these TINY fees, given what they pay monthly in rent and common area fees. Nor would a corporation incur the payroll expense of having an employee solely responsible for keeping up with renewal dates/fees for all their stores across the country. This was a GWINNETT “CF”, you can bank on it.