Who's In?

On April 1, Vermont not-for-profit performing arts organizations who sold at least $50,000 in tickets last year will be required to collect a new 6% sales tax from their patrons.  Efforts to repeal the tax (enacted as part of the omnibus Miscellaneous Tax Bill at the very end of the 2010 session) have been met with quiet certainty in the Legislature and in the Administration that those efforts will fail. 

The harsh reality is that the State is looking for revenue under every rock, stone, pebble, and, in this case, grain of sand.           

On the surface it seems reasonable to ask whether a patron paying $20, $50, or sometimes even $100 shouldn’t be asked to pony up an additional $1.20, $3, or $6.  If one can afford $100, surely one can afford $106, right?  For probably 99% of all patrons (including me and members of the Legislature) this statement is true.

But what about the other 1%?  What about the patron who scrimps and saves every penny to be able to afford the good seats so that his/her family can see their first Nutcracker up close?  The reality is that for this person, the decision will be either to not go at all or, at best, to drop down to the next most expensive category of seats.  The result?  The organization loses that income completely, or the difference between the higher and lower ticket price. Multiply those few patron-decisions times the number of events in a typical season and the lost revenue quickly climbs into the thousands of dollars.

Again, no big deal right?  Well, on this there is a huge divergence of opinion. On one side (generally populated by people who have never managed a not-for-profit) the response is “Yeah, no big deal—what’s a few thousand bucks to an organization that’s bringing in $50,000 or more in a single year in ticket sales?”  On the other side are the arts professionals who have done their homework and know exactly what their “price points” are for any given production.  Furthermore, they know that even if they sell out every seat in the house, on average, the income from ticket sales will generate only about 35% of the costs needed to present the artist(s) in their seasons.  “A few thousand bucks” is frequently the difference between solvency and insolvency.  At the very least it's a few thousand bucks that has to be raised instead of earned.

What if there were a better way?

If the Administration and the Legislature are truly looking for more revenue, rather than tax patrons at the box office (which everyone in state government understands may increase current revenues from the sector by about $400,000), they should help the not-for-profit arts sector do the one thing that it has never been able to do for itself—market and promote the extraordinary programs available across the state to the millions of potential “cultural tourists” that live in Boston, Hartford/Springfield, New York, Philadelphia, Albany, Montreal, and Quebec.

Here’s why:  with NO statewide, coordinated marketing and promotional activity across the sector EVER, this sector nevertheless contributes nearly $19.5 million each year in state and local tax revenues (not to mention all the other public benefits).  Heck, it works for the ski industry, doesn't it?  Imagine what the arts sector will contribute once a little grease starts oiling its promotional wheels?

Taxing patrons will hurt the sector.  Spending a little bit on marketing will strengthen the sector and vastly increase state and local tax revenues.  We've already started and we have the baseline information to compare our efforts to, thanks to Doug Hoffer and Melinda Moulton.  Let's keep it going.

Who’s in?

Who will be first?

On day 30 of the 36-day Army-McCarthy Hearings in June, 1954, attorney Joseph Nye Welch finally had enough.  “Until this moment, Senator, I think I never gauged your cruelty or your recklessness...Let us not assassinate this lad further, Senator. You've done enough. Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?"

I look at the cultural landscape of this great country during this very difficult period of deep recession, high unemployment, massive state and federal deficits, religious and ethnic mistrust, global warming, and polarizing media, and have to ask—“Have we left no sense of decency?”

Decency means many things in this context.  It means possessing a concern for others, a balanced sense of morality, a basic understanding of fairness, an ability to accept blame when it is deserved and offer forgiveness where it is warranted.  Above all else, it means doing the right thing at the right time for the right reasons.

It feels as if our nation has lost its collective sense of decency.  We still fight two wars on the opposite side of the globe. Our Supreme Court considers corporations to be individual people.  We bail out incomprehensibly wealthy “people” who work in the financial industries (whose primary purpose is to collect transaction fees from the buying and selling of shares as opposed to producing anything of tangible value) and yet slam our working class union members including our public servants and school teachers.  Even worse, we elect political leaders whose best idea for solving our problems is to reduce Government’s capacity for serving the public so much that it fails completely.

Almost every day I read an article or have a conversation in the State House about the latest "indecent" proposal to cut programs and services from those most in need.  I see well-intentioned people try to make decisions about what to spend public money on based only on how much those services cost, not also on what benefit they offer.   I see teachers required to teach larger and larger groups of students; to serve as social service agents or as parental proxies to the point where I have to believe that we’re not actually teaching our children, we are simply stabling them until they’re old enough to make decisions for themselves.  And what kind of decisions can we expect from them?  I don’t think anyone contemplating this question needs a high school diploma to come up with the answer.

My wonderful niece, one of the most “decent” people I know, is a junior in college, majoring in local food production and management.  She recently told her mother (my sister) that she doesn’t expect to have children.  It’s not that she doesn’t like children or can’t have them.  She just can’t, in good conscience, bring them into the world that she will, in less than two years, have to face herself.  How depressing is that from a young woman who just turned 21?

So who is going to be first? 

Who is going to challenge corporate America and tell it that the real social contract lies in the old French concept of noblesse oblige: that those who have the means must take care of those less fortunate?

Who is going to point out the folly of fighting two foreign wars and paying for them by borrowing money from Asia, in effect saddling our grand-children and great-grand-children with crippling debt or worse, the humiliation of defaulting?

Who is going to explain to elected officials that their job is to lead and to govern, not follow the dictates of the latest opinion poll?

Who is going to explain to the public that too little government results not in less regulation but actual anarchy?

Who is going to explain that the “poverty line” is actually two or three times higher than policy-makers and economists say it is.

Who is going to remind our elected officials that their professional and moral obligation is to maximize revenues just as much as it is to reduce expenses?

Who is going to convince the electorate that returning to the tax structure of the 1990s is going to have virtually no impact on 98% of them, and that the remaining 2% can certainly afford the marginal increase?

Speaking of the wealthy, who is going to ask them what it's like, really, living in a gated community?

Who is going to tell the media that Sarah and Christine and Paul and Rush and their ilk are suitable for Entertainment Tonight, E!, or Comedy Central but, frankly, not so much for CNN, MSNBC, FN or any of the broadcast news programs?

Who is going to be the first one to stand up and tell the proverbial emperor (is it Rush or Glenn?) that he has no clothes; that he is lying to himself and to us? 

Who is going to say enough already?

Vermont, it seems. 

Are we ready?

Cutting off Our Noses to Kill the Golden-Egg-Laying Goose

The President’s 2012 budget axe fell earlier this week and the results weren’t pretty. He recommended a nearly 13% cut to both the National Endowments for the Arts (NEA) and Humanities (NEH) and one would be hard-pressed to find a better way to describe this recommendation than the title of this post.

First, even here in Vermont, it is generally acknowledged that Vermont's investment in the Arts is so small that were it to be reduced to zero, there would be a negligible reduction in expense side of the State’s ledger. But, oh my, what such a step would mean on the income side!

At the Federal level, this impact is even more negligible.  Of the US's current $3.8 Trillion(!) budget, the NEA’s appropriation of $167.5 million represents just under 44/10,000ths of one percent.  That’s right: .0000438 of the total $3,819,000,000,000. The cut proposed by the President would reduce that figure to 39/10,000ths of a percent. As a manager, I consider a figure that much less than one percent to not even rise to the level of a rounding error.

To help people visualize what this means by comparison, I offer the following:

If the Federal Budget represented the total mileage between, say, Montpelier and Bennington (a distance of 121 miles), the distance one could travel on just the NEA’s portion of that “budget” would be slightly less than 25 feet.

If the Federal  Budget represented the 542 miles from my office at 136 State Street in Montpelier to the US Capitol Building on the National Mall (542 miles, according to Mapquest), the distance I could travel on the NEA’s portion of that “budget” would be 111.5 feet—or about halfway from our front door to the corner of State Street and Bailey Avenue.

For those of you who like temporal comparisons here are two that will make you sit up and take note:

If the Federal Budget represented the 18 hours, 20 minutes you might spend watching all the films directed by James Cameron in one sitting, including “Piranha II”, (and who among us wouldn't want that?), the amount of time you would have to suffer due to the “NEA’s Portion” of that experience would be 2.6 seconds.  That’s barely enough time to take a swig of your medium Sierra Mist, no ice!

If the Federal Budget represented an eight-hour school day, and the NEA’s portion was devoted to Art Class?  Hang on to your seats, people, you only have 1.1 seconds to paint, act, dance, or tickle (the ivories).

Saving 12.8% of nothing will result in saving...umm...nothing!

Doug Hoffer’s report (discussed at length in an earlier post), on the other hand reveals that, with very little marketing and promotional support from State agencies, the nonprofit arts sector (arts organizations and individual artists) provide nearly $19.5 million to State and local government coffers.  State and local investment in the arts here in Vermont is generously estimated to be $2.5 million.  That’s an “ROI” each year of 775%.

So, for the sake of argument, I asked: what if the expected ROI for the US was the equal to the ROI for Vermont? Or, phrased more clearly, what is 775% of $167.5 million? 

(Drum roll please) 

$1.298 billion...or about 6/10ths of one percent of total US receipts for 2011.  By my figuring, if the President reduces the NEA’s budget to $146.3 million, it will lower receipts to $1.133 billion (146.3 x 775%).  That’s a difference of $165 million dollars $1.298-$1.133).  So cutting about $23 million from the NEA’s budget will reduce US revenues by an amount equivalent to the total current cost of funding the NEA!

The concept that the President has not yet figured out is that the NEA and its sister agencies more than pay for themselves every year in tax receipts paid by people whose jobs depend on a healthy arts and humanities infrastructure.  No, I’m not just talking about artists, administrators, lecturers, teachers, and the like…I’m also talking about the restaurateurs, the owners of B&Bs and hotels, wedding industry professionals, and anyone else whose jobs depend on quality of life, integrity/authenticity of experience, quality of education and workforce preparation. 

It seems to me the President should increase these budgets, not decrease them.  More importantly, if the Republicans in the House who are insisting on even more draconian cuts are really serious about job growth and income generation, they might want to rethink their absurd strategy of cutting the NEA even more than the President.

You hear it here often…the arts exist on the income side of the public ledger, not the expense side.  A thriving arts sector will always generate a lot more money for governments than it will spend.  From our largest cities to our smallest villages this has proven true again and again and again.  So I would suggest that if your representative is only paying attention to the expense side of the Federal budget, (s)he's doing only half his/er job. And if he or she is one of the ones who wants to eliminate the NEA, an agency that has proven, year in and year out to lay golden egg after golden egg...well!..

...there's gotta be a face-spiting, bathwater-throwing, mixed metaphor in there somewhere.

Please, will someone tell the President and the House of Representatives?

Three (types of) Questions All Board-candidates Should Ask...

...and Trustees/Staff should know the answers to.

A colleague was recently about to interview for a board-candidate slot at a local arts organization and wondered what kinds of questions she should ask of other trustees and staff when she met with them.  I suggested a few basic questions and then realized this was a topic that probably a lot of people either never think to explore or, if they do, are a little embarrassed to bring up for fear of insulting the organization that’s considering them for Board service. 

Since good Board service is so integral to the health of any nonprofit, it is incumbent on trustees and candidates to seek answers to these questions and, more importantly, to insist that answers be full and forthcoming.  Only when you know what you’re dealing with is it possible to move an organization forward. 

So here is my list of some basic questions that all trustees should ask, and all organizations should be prepared to answer, broken out into three categories:

Questions Trustee Candidates Should Always Explore

Financial Questions:

·         Of the total revenue, what percentage is contributed every year?

·         What portion of contributed income is expected to be raised by the board directly?

·         What portion is expected to be contributed personally by each board member (on average)?

·         What portion is expected to be raised by the board in conjunction with staff?

·         How much contributed income is staff expected to generate (applying for grants, etc.)?

·         What are the most effective ways that the organization has found to raise money?

·         What is a “significant” gift to the organization; i.e. at what amount is the red carpet rolled out and a special party thrown? (If it’s less than $1000, ugh.)

·         And the corollary question: If a “significant” gift turns out to be less than $1,000 how is that gift recognized?

·         What, if any financial relationships are there between the organization and other collaborators? How are these managed?  Are the collaborative goals and expectations in writing?

Governance Questions:

·         What is the mission of the organization?  (You’d be surprised how often other trustees and staff hem and haw over this one!)

·         What is the committee structure of the board and who reports to whom and with what frequency?

·         To what degree are trustees allowed to be consulted in program planning?  Related to this, how much direct participation does the staff want/expect from the board? How much does the Board expect/want to have?

·         How often is the strategic plan revisited during the course of the implementation cycle?  (In other words, if it’s a 3-year plan, there should be three annual work plans developed by staff and endorsed by the board, each of which is closely reviewed twice a year during a board meeting: the first time to review last year’s progress and lay out the coming year’s expectations at the beginning of the fiscal year; the second time at mid-year to review ytd progress against the stated goals and to reflect changes in opportunities and circumstances.)

·         Does the Executive Director receive an annual review by the board?  If so, how?  If not, why?

·         What are the top five most critical issues facing the organization?  Or, put another way, has the organization engaged a third party to develop a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats) analysis for itself going forward through the next few years?  What has it revealed?

Communications and Marketing Questions:

(Internal)

·         How and how often does staff report to the board on its activities?

·         Does the board have a means to communicate among its own members without staff present?

·         Are board meetings generally policy/planning discussions; or are they generally reports on progress from staff to board?

·         How effectively are listservs, website, and social marketing tools being used to communicate between the board and staff?

·         How often does the board meet and does it make (effective) use of its committees?

(External)

·         Who or what is your primary constituency?  Does the organization have more than one?

·         What is the relationship of the organization to the local print and broadcast media?  Who manages those relationships?

·         How much information is conveyed “traditionally” (print, broadcast, paid advertising, direct mail) and how much is conveyed electronically (email, listserv, web forms, social media like Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, etc.)?

·         Are your various e-communications linked to each other and do they drive people to your website?

·         What does your website’s home page ask someone who lands on it to consider doing?

·         What does your Executive Director WANT someone to do when he/she lands on the website’s home page?

·         How competent is staff at web “content management;” is it able to respond to the ever-changing appetites of your audience on your website or does it need training?  (If staff is not managing the website’s content, this might be an area worth spending money on immediately to lower the external costs of managing the site’s content).

Some of these questions are best asked of other trustees, but some really need to be asked of staff.  Remember, as a trustee, you will have a "fiduciary responsibility” for the organization.  Don’t be shy about asking these questions, don't forget to leave the interview with a copy of the organizations' most recent audit in your hands, and if the answers you are given are unsatisfactory, you should seriously consider not joining the board, or doing so conditionally.  Remember, no matter how heart-warming and stirring the mission of the organization is, if it is managed poorly or if the board lacks commitment to the mission, it's going to be very hard to serve on its board.

Please share questions YOU have found valuable to ask as a potential trustee!

How Art Supports us All

It’s the time of year when budget discussions and funding priorities cause me to awaken each day with a need to prove to someone new that the arts matter; to explain that far from being a social amenity or, worse, a luxury for the elite, the arts provide vital connections among, and social, intellectual, and emotional content to, all parts of society.

I have put together a few examples of exactly how and why the arts really DO matter –not just to people directly involved in creating and presenting art, but to everyone.

A Town and Agency Dilemma

Several years ago we were asked by the Transportation Agency to see if the Arts Council could help it with a project in a town in the Northeast Kingdom.  The Agency and the town had—at that time—spent more than 25 years disagreeing with each other about how a federal highway, which doubled as the town’s “Main Street” would be rehabilitated to current USDOT standards without ruining the essential character of the village center and its village green.    

Within a matter of 20 months, artists had been selected to work with a town/agency committee, developed a design charrette that explored a variety of creative design solutions, the final result of which received the unanimous blessing of the town’s select board, its people, and the Agency.

The artists’ commitment to the project, and more importantly, their ideas, were an essential part of putting to rest the project’s troubled history and putting it on track.  And it wasn’t just the “art people” who benefitted.  It was the entire town—the vendors who sell their wares on the town green on market day; the kids who play catch on the green or enjoy the fall foliage festival, the folks who pay their local taxes at the town clerk’s office, or shop at the local country store.  The project breaks ground this April, and when, two years from now, the work is completed, the parking will be improved, the viewscape will be enhanced, the safety of pedestrians and passersby will be ensured, and dotted throughout the ¾-mile long “canvas” will be works of sculpture and built objects that will provide echoes of the towns past and markers for its future.

A few artists helped make it happen, but everyone benefits.

Poetry:     Out Loud but Not Heard

Six years ago, at the urging of the National Endowment for the Arts, the Council organized Vermont’s participation in an annual poetry recitation contest, similar in concept to the Scripps Spelling Bee Competition.  Each year one Vermont High School Champion is flown to Washington DC to compete for top honors in front of a distinguished panel of judges.  Winners get scholarships and their schools receive significant visibility and—perhaps more important—funds to purchase books.

Last week I and two colleagues attended a different kind of Poetry Out Loud competition—a pilot project with the Community School of Vermont whose students, for reasons that will soon be apparent, are unable to participate in the regular competition.  Our journey took us almost to the Canadian border, down a country road, through a parking lot next to a wall topped with coiled barbed wire, into a waiting area, through a “lock-down” portal and into the community activities room at the Northern State Correctional Facility in Newport.  There, six young men treated us and about 25 of their fellow inmates to an hour-long recital.

It was a two-week pilot, offered for credit, and these six young men were as passionate and professional as any other kid I’ve seen in the POL finals.  One or two might have suffered from a learning disorder, or a lack of schooling “on the outside.”  But the intensity they brought to their performance clearly showed how this project had reached them.  Two things were particularly noteworthy.  One was a poem written by Eddie* reflecting on the (presumably autobiographical) circumstances that put him in prison. “Lying there, stretched out on the pavement, he was dead.  And the gun was in my hand.  I hadn’t been man enough to walk the other way.  Now I had to run.”  In the next segment he read a work by Tupac Shakur: “The Fear in the Heart of a Man”: 

Against an attacker, I will boldly take my stand
because my heart will show, fear for no man
Before a broken heart, I run with fright
scared to be blind in the vulnerable night
I believe this fear is in every man
some will acknowledge it, others will fail to understand
  there's no fear in a shallow heart
because the shallow heart is faint and don't fall apart
because the shallow heart is faint don't fall apart
But feeling hearts that truly care
are fragile to the flow of air
And if I am to be true then I must give.. my fragile heart
my fragile heart

The second was a poem written by Michael *—a paean to “My Main Squeeze” in which he describes in great detail how his Main Squeeze is so important to him—is there for him night and day; there to inspire him; there to talk him through the lonely times; there to be nibbled on and caressed by his sweet lips; and who will be waiting for him when he gets out to help him put his life back in order…  His Main Squeeze, it turns out, is his ballpoint pen…

The poignancy of the first and the humor of the second was proof that these were not “average” people—assuming, that is, that one could look past their being incarcerated.  These six young men are in trouble now.  But what happens next? 

If the few thousand dollars we spent helps inspire even one of these six young men to turn his life around and stay out of prison—that is a huge savings to taxpayers and well-worth exploring further.  Again, a few artists make it happen, but everyone benefits.

Artists May Hide, but They Can Also Run…a business that is.

We hear it all the time.  “Oh, I couldn’t possibly be do that (fill out a form, learn to use a computer, apply for 501(C)(3) status, etc.).  I’m not a business person.  I’m an artist!”  Well tell that to Simon Pearce.  Tell it to Judi and Fred Danforth.  Tell it to Warren and Lorraine Kimble, to Sabra Field, to Grace Potter, to Charlie Shackleton and Miranda Thomas, to the good people at Wall Goldfinger and Conant Metal and Light, and to the hundreds of filmmakers and photographers and thousands of other creative artists and craftspeople around the state whose work adorns our walls and table-tops; whose songs fill our mp3 players and smart phones, and who employ hundreds, even thousands of “average” people in shops and studios around the state.

Next month the Council will host its fourth “Breaking into Business” Workshop in Windsor.  The word about these two-day intense workshops is out…we have more than 45 applicants for only 25 spots. 

Our constituents wanted our help in learning how to better market and promote their work, both in Vermont and beyond its borders.  They wanted the state to partner with them in promoting Vermont’s artists and art works.  They wanted help in learning how to take advantage of the internet and of social media and social marketing tools like websites, facebook and twitter.   They wanted to meet other like-minded people so they could share resources and provide mutual support. 

In a time of scarce resources, we have to help people make connections, provide them with training and support services and zero in on just a few critical skills that are really effective at helping people help themselves.  By helping one artist to become the next Simon Pearce or the next Judi Danforth, employing dozens of people in their manufacturing process, their gift shops, their fulfillment warehouses –we are helping others who aren’t artists.

All of which, by the way, are examples of how art supports me, you, your community, and the state Vermont.

Stay safe and be warm.

*Not their real names

Looking for Multi-partisanship

Happy 2011!  As the Vermont Legislature reconvenes and we all welcome the Shumlin Administration, it's a great time to pause and reflect on how the arts fits into the overall Vermont economic recovery picture and to look at a couple of issues that will be confronting our field in the coming biennium.

The big issue, of course, is the looming $150 million hole in the state budget.  The general tendency when there is a budget deficit is to cut expenses.  This strategy works for corporations and individuals.  But it doesn't work so well for governments because people need government-funded services during a recession more than when there isn't one.  If anything, government should actually increase its spending during a recession because it is the only sector that tends to have access to investment capital that will, if used wisely, will help us "grow our way" out of the recession.

Also, cutting expenses is only half the job of our public servants.  The other half is to raise revenues--especially for those of us who are in a position to do so.  The state of Vermont has many ways to increase its revenues (taxes on income, property, sales and use, room and meals; fees for hunting, driving, fishing, camping and other services; and many other things too tedious to mention here).  But a recent study (from Doug Hoffer courtesy of Melinda Moulton) shows that the revenue impact of the arts sector on the State of Vermont is close to $19.5 million--or about $17 million MORE than the state invests in the arts through various agencies.  This is an ROI of nearly 800%...every year!

Another aspect of economic recovery requires one to think slightly more holistically about what kinds of things generate investments that lead to jobs.  Why do people choose to live and work in one town and not another  Why do people choose to establish a business in Vermont and not in New Hampshire or New York?

According to people like Richard Florida, more than ever, people can live where they want because technology has enabled them to telecommute.  As more and more of Vermont gets broadband (a big shout out to my pals at the Vermont Council on Rural Development), the more Vermont will become attractive to telecommuters.  But broadband is only a piece of the "where to live" decision.  Equally important are the availability of housing stock, the quality of the local shopping, the access to high quality recreational and cultural opportunities and, perhaps most important of all, the quality of the local schools.  These last two, cultural opportunities and quality of schools are directly related to the health of the cultural sector.  The healthier and more vibrant the arts in a community, the better the cultural and educational opportunities will be.  And if those are good, then you've got really compelling reasons for entrepreneurs to move in, establish roots, and start employing people.

The second issue is the impact of a sales tax on tickets sold for nonprofit-produced performances.  Sure, a sales tax isn't going to stop me, personally, from attending a show.  But it might stop someone else.  It is that last, "on the margin" ticket-buyer that is often the difference between a success or a failure in the nonprofit world.  Nonprofits exist to educate, inspire, fulfill, and nurture.  Ticket sales represent usually about 30 to 40 percent of a nonprofit's revenue.  Donations and grants make up the remainder and it is the quality and originality of programming, the community/educational outreach, and the perceived social service value of the nonprofit that triggers these donations and grants.  Taxing tickets may seem like a good idea, but it won't raise anywhere near as much money for the state as people think, and it may just induce a tipping point for some organizations whose own margins are razor-thin.  Is a tax worth it?  I personally don't think so, but I look forward to the debate in the Legislature in the coming weeks.  I hope we will see some multi-partisan agreement coalescing around this issue.

Finally, as we look ahead just a month or two, the sixth Poetry Out Loud competition will be happening in 40 schools around the state.  But what has me excited most of all right now is that one of the schools is the Vermont Community High School and it is doing its own version of Poetry Out Loud for the first time.

What, you're not familiar with this school?  It's Vermont's largest public high school and it exists under the jurisdiction of the Corrections Department.  But more on this unusual pilot in future posts.

For now, I'm looking forward to welcoming the new legislature and the new administration and celebrating our newest Cultural Facilities grantees on January 13th.

For all of you out there, please stay in touch and drive safely...!

ACT 160 UPDATE, Vermont Performing Arts Organizations, PLEASE READ!!

Act 160, the omnibus tax bill signed into law last spring (May, 2010) contains language that will require those of you that sell $50,000 or more in tickets to performances this year to charge a 6% sales tax on tickets to your events starting this April 1st.

We have just learned that ANY organization that uses a third-party ticketing outlet will probably have to charge the sales tax, EVEN IF YOU SOLD LESS THAN $50,000-WORTH OF TICKETS IN 2010!! The reason for this is that the Tax Department is interpreting the statute to read that the ticket seller is responsible for collecting the tax, therefore it is the ticket-seller's threshold, not the presenting entity's threshold, that matters.

Therefore, REGARDLESS of whether you believe this law will apply to you starting in April, WILL ALL OF YOU PLEASE fill out our incredibly brief questionnaire on the subject, by clicking HERE?

If you filled out a similar survey we sent out last spring, please fill it out again--you probably have more accurate numbers to report anyway...

Thank you!