The New Mailbox Rule: Get One
If anyone is wondering what to get Cademon Brewing of Genoa, Illinois, for Christmas, I suggest a mailbox. It's functional, it gets your letters from the IRS to your brewery, and it's a lot cheaper than the $18,000 for which the brewery is asking in its IndieGoGo campaign to raise money for its outstanding sales taxes.
In an interview with Good Beer Hunting, Cademon owner Andrew Nordman said the brewery was operating on an annual sales tax reporting period. However, the Department of Revenue changed Cardemon's status from an annual filing to a monthly filing, which the brewery claims it was never made aware of.
The Department of Revenue states that it evaluates an entity's tax status annually based on monthly sales tax filings to determine when said entity should be filing its sales taxes: monthly, quarterly, or annually. When the Department determines that an entity's tax filing status needs to change, it sends a letter to the entity and usually contacts them via the Department's Collections Department.
Cademon says it was not aware of the change in tax status "due to an unfortunate mix-up," the mix up being that the brewery doesn't have a mailbox and "things get misplaced." Because the Department of Revenue has placed a hold on their liquor license until the brewery pays the back taxes, the brewery isn't able to sell its beer to raise the funds and has instead turned to crowdfunding, asking its patrons to pay its taxes in exchange for perks, such as monthly releases of its planned small-batch beers and brewery swag like pens and stickers.
Nordman admits the campaign is maladroit and says he understands any criticism the public may have. Reading the IndieGoGo page, I noticed that the $18,000 for which the brewery is asking not only covers the outstanding tax payments and liquor license renewal, but also covers the costs of the perks. I'm admittedly not very familiar with how IndieGoGo campaigns are organized, so maybe rolling the costs of the so-called "perks" people are getting into the total is standard, but it seems a little fishy to me. If I may be pedantic for a moment, "perks" are short for "perquisite," which are "incidental...benefit[s], privilege[s], or advantage[s]" or gratuities or tips.
So Cademon is not only asking its patrons to foot its tax payments it claims it didn't know about because it doesn't have a mailbox, but it is also asking them to foot the costs of the "perks" they'll be receiving for assisting in making those tax payments.
You can read the entire interview with Good Beer Hunting here and visit Cademon's IndieGoGo campaign here. You can read what the Twitterverse had to say about it here.