Our visit to the B.O.E. & Business Checks

The other day after work we headed up to the BOE (The State Board of Equalization) to obtain our sellers permit so we can remit sales taxes to the State of California.

It was a really pleasant experience. 

We got their at 4pm on a weekday and there was no line. I just walked up and said I had an application for a sellers permit that I wanted to submit and she pointed us to another window and off we went.

We sat down and a gal went over the paperwork, entered a bunch of items in the computer, and gave us not only our blanket sellers permit, but one for online sales and one for the farmers market we are planning on selling at!

In and out in less than an hour--- and not a single fee. From a government entity too. It was free!!!

I wish I could say the same thing about our business checks. I got a call from US Bank, where we opened our free business checking account and she wanted to know if we needed some checks for our account and we started going over the information over the phone...

and then we got to the costs. She wanted to charge us $70 for a set of business checks... Just regular ones like I use for my personal checking account (which I get for free at BOFA...)

When I asked her why business checks were SOOOOO much more money for an exactly identical service offered for a personal account, she didn't have an answer. She just said that business services normally came with larger fees.

I told her we didn't need them.   

If I have to, I'll just write a personal check for the farmers market stall if they won't let us pay for the stall in Cash. That's just plain ridiculous.