But if you know anything about the Marketplace Fairness Act, you know that my business doesn’t even classify as a small business. At about $1 million in annual sales, we will likely not hit the $30 million dollar limits that the SBA still classifies as a small business. So why the $1 MM threshold?

Let me take a second to break things down for you. The Marketplace Fairness Act believes “a sale is a sale.” This will force e-commerce sites, such as WrestlingGear.Com, to collect sales tax on every sale.

What does this mean for you?

For every online, telephone, catalog, Amazon or eBay transaction you make moving forward, you will be required to pay a sales and use tax. Regardless of overall intent, ultimately the MFA will force consumers to pay more for the goods they purchase online. In fact, many consumers said they may even change their online shopping habits if the Act passes.

A personal example, I purchased a camera for my business from New York. I paid Illinois use tax of 6.25%. If this bill passes, I’d have to pay 8%. How is that not a new tax?

What does this mean for WrestlingGear.Com?

If passed through the House, the MFA would require ecommerce retailers who make more than $1 million per year in states they do not have a physical presence to collect sales tax as well as pay taxes to each customer’s state and local government.

Now back to how we compete. Big businesses don’t carry the breadth of inventory we carry in our warehouse/store. It’s that simple. We have more wrestling gear, clothing and equipment than traditional brick and mortar stores. We take care of our customers, ship fast, and handle their problems. Many people are surprised when I pick up the phone that they are talking directly to the owner. Our ability to operate and be flexible over the years is due in large part to being 100% focused on our very thin margins.

For 15 years that’s been our “secret” to success. To quote an article that our small business was featured in from 2008, “One of our focuses when we started was that we had to make money on every transaction. We paid attention to our margins. It was pretty basic.” It has always been our goal to keep things simple, and this bill will complicate things for our small business.

Because of MFA, we will be forced to change our website shipping costs, manually code more than 500 products we sell, update our accounting system, update our catalog and phone taking system, as well as pay an accountant to file 45 sales tax returns monthly. These costs will be passed onto you. And that is all on top of the new taxes.

What’s Next?

While the Marketplace Fairness Act passed through the Senate with ease, it’s not fairing quite as well in the House. The Act will face a vote here to determine what happens next. There is no vote date set for the bill to be seen in the House and even if it does not pass, it will move to the President who has already expressed support.

Want to learn more? Check out some useful videos for getting up to speed on the MFA:

- US Representatives speaking against internet tax – Video 1

- US Representatives speaking against internet tax – Video 2

Share your opinion with us. We’d love to know what you think!

05/23/2013

Dear President O’Bama and Congress and Senators:

I named this blog post, “I am…Small Business” in honor of those great commercials put on by Universities showing how their students graduated and did great things. Plus I think it is an accurate title for me, I own a Small Business. Depending how what definition of small business you use, I am really more like a micro business. We are not likely going to hit the $20 MM or $30 MM limits that many large government organizations still classify as small business.

We are just big enough though to be affected by the pending legislation called the Market Place Fairness Act. What a great name, it should be called something like – Big Business is tired of losing about 17% of their business to Small Online Retailers Act. Let’s be honest where is the money coming from to lobby and get this done. It’s big business plain and simple.

My company does not exist because we are cheaper than the local small business sporting good store. Heck I don’t think there are many small business sporting goods store out there. I can remember growing up going to see Len the owner of the store and getting my First Basemen’s mitt. I still have that mitt and most times I put it on, I remember that day going to get it. That simply does not happen now. When I need sporting goods equipment, I go to a big business to buy it. There really are not too many options at least in my area. Big Business has crushed Small Locally Owned Companies.

Now back to how we compete. Well those big businesses don’t carry the breadth of inventory we carry in our warehouse/store. It’s that simple. Plus we take care of our customers, ship it fast, and take care of their problems. We don’t have a very complex phone system with press #1 to talk to Customer Service, #2 for accounting, if someone is available, we pick up the phone. Many people are surprised when I pick up the phone that they are talking to the owner.

Let’s get back to this tax situation. Would it surprise you that many states already have a use tax? That people should be paying that tax on their state sales tax return. Would it surprise you that when Amazon sales become taxable, that it is estimated that only about 17% of e-commerce transactions will be un-taxed. How much money are these governments going to collect per person? Well my math might not be perfect but it will be around $6 a person. Or about $20 per household. I know when I did my State Sales tax return, I just paid the safe harbor amount and it was over $20. So Illinois is not going to collect more from me. To be honest, I am a licensed CPA, so I almost always look to pay sales tax on the transactions I do online. I don’t want to risk my CPA license to save a few buck on taxes.

If you want to check my math, I averaged the use tax of states – comes to about 5% almost exactly, there are around 114,000,000 households and over 300,000,000 people in the USA.

So why not try to collect the $6 from everyone of the 300,000,000 people? Well why do that when you can have approximately 10,000 e-commerce companies collect it for you. Then as a thank you tell them you are going to audit them. And if you do something wrong, they will have to pay penalties and interest. And as another thank you, give them as little as 90 days notice that they need to start collecting these taxes.

Here are some ideas for the states to clean up their finances.

1) Eliminate pensions. All pensions. There is a reason the Fortune 500 company my dad worked for decided to switch from a pension to a 401 (k) plan. The pensions cost too much.

2) How about supporting the teachers? Does it really make sense for a teacher who makes $100,000 a year to be grading papers? Why not do what the large accounting firm I did during tax time. Hire interns to do data entry or other tasks like photo copying or other administrative tasks. Have junior teachers or assistants that make $35,000 a year help grade papers. Then those interns, junior teachers or assistants after a few years could become full fledged teachers. It’s just a complete waste of money – the teachers time is valuable.

3) Help small businesses out and have the teachers work 12 months a year. See point #2 and give them support so they are not working 45 to 60 hours a week during the school year. We have to figure out what we are doing with our kids during the summer once again. It’s going to cost us money to either put them in camps or have staff work the hours my wife or I will miss taking care of our kids.

4) If you do pass this act, give us a year’s notice. Allow someone to figure out a cheap way to get in compliance. Have all sales online or via catalog or phone or even sold in store a flat rate. Say make them all 5% on everything. Make it simpler for us to comply. BTW, are you going to have every traditional retail store ask for ID and have the retail stores collect their sales tax depending on what city they live in? That is what happens here in Chicago when you buy a car. I suspect the brick and mortar stores won’t have that to worry about. I guess those retailers have better lobbyists than us!

5) Give us a credit, yes I said a credit for any expenses associated with collecting these taxes. I have heard $40,000 to build a system and to comply. I bet that number is not that far off. So let us pay $40,000 less in Federal taxes and let us carry it forward or better yet make it refundable.

6) Go after big business for their lack of paying corporate income taxes. Don’t allow them to transfer profits to Ireland or Switzerland almost tax free on profits made here in the Good Old USA. There is a lot more money there than there is on this sales tax collection. Companies set up entities in these countries with very few employees with the sole purpose of them saving corporate income taxes. Why isn’t this ever discussed? Again Big Business, Big Lobbyists, Big Government.

7) This last one just bugs me and it does not really relate to the sales tax thing. But why can’t I as a Small Business Owner save like if I was an employee with these Big Businesses. I don’t have the money or even the staff to justify having a full fledged 401 K plan, I have an IRA plan for my wife and I. We can only save $5,000 a year (so $10,000) between the two of us. Why not help Small Businesses and allow us to save what people can put away in a 401 K plan? Why are we being penalized for being a Small Business.

Signed,

Jeff Pape
Small Business Owner

If you’re just as passionate about the sport as we are, you know how important it is to do everything we can to save wrestling in the 2020 games. Aside from donating to the cause ourselves, we wanted to come up with another way for wrestling fans to get involved in this important movement.

That’s why we’ve added this wrestling t-shirt to our apparel collection. This Save Wrestling t-shirt is all black and features a dynamic image that shows your support for our sport. All proceeds from this wrestling t-shirt will go directly towards costs associated with saving the great sport of wrestling at the 2020 games.

Why is this important? Wrestling is man’s oldest sport, and more importantly, it’s the sport we all love. Support this important movement by purchasing a wrestling t-shirt for yourself and all your friends from WrestlingGear.Com. Each t-shirt costs only $15 and is available in both adult and youth sizes.

Learn more about The 2020 Vision and find out how you can get involved in keeping the dream alive for our favorite sport.

We figured it would be a good time to talk a little more about our president. Pape graduated from East Leyden in 1990, where he wrestled for Hall of Fame coach Chuck Farina. He continued wrestling briefly at the University of Illinois in Champaign/Urbana. After graduating from Illinois in 1994, he returned to Franklin Park to take over as head coach of the Raiders youth wrestling club. He ran the club for 9 years before taking a break to start a family in 2003.

Pape returned to coaching wrestling when his sons were old enough to wrestle. Currently he acts as an assistant coach with the Jr. Cougars wrestling club in Hoffman Estates.
Jeff and his wife Nancy have owned and operated WrestlingGear.com for 10 years. Along with coaching, Jeff has served on the IWCOA Executive committee for several years and the National Wrestling Hall of Fame Committee – Illinois Chapter.

The Illinois Wrestling Coaches and Officials Association will induct nineteen outstanding contributors into its Hall of Fame as member of the Class of 2013. Ceremonies will be held at the Park Place of Countryside, 6240 Joliet Road, Countryside at the 43rd Annual Hall of Fame Banquet on Saturday, April 20, 2013.

Jeff will be honored at the induction banquet on April 20, 2013 at Park Place of Countryside. Advanced tickets are required. We would love to see as many of Jeff’s former wrestlers and families make it to the event. More information on tickets can be acquired by contacting Joe Cliffe at Phone 815-692-3727.

This is why we are proud to say that we recently contributed to the efforts of The Coalition to Keep Wrestling in the Olympics. This new coalition includes any and all organizations that are willing to support the common goal of insuring that wrestling remains on the program of the Olympic Games.

This collection includes groups of all sizes, and includes both non-profit and for-profit organizations.

“WrestlingGear.com believes in the cause of this national, governing body and is proud to help show our commitment to keep wrestling in the Olympics,” said Jeff Pape, WrestlingGear.com president.

The Amateur Athletic Union (AAU), the National United Wrestling Association for Youth (NUWAY), the National Wrestling Coaches Association (NWCA) and USA Wrestling were the first to volunteer to join this newly created coalition. These four organizations have significant wrestling memberships and as such, we are proud to work together with them to keep wrestling in Olympics.

How can you show your support for this important cause? Follow the Keep Wrestling in the Olympics Facebook page for updates, donate, sign local petitions, and share articles on your personal Facebook and Twitter feeds.

Learn more about The Coalition to Keep Wrestling in the Olympics and find out more about how you can show your support for this worthy cause.

Fortunately for you, we still have plenty of Nike Inflicts in stock ready to ship even now. Not sure how long they will last so you should order them sooner than later.

We still have a very limited supply of  Adult SpeedSweeps, Youth SpeedSweeps, and Nike Takedowns as well.

Order them now at – http://www.wrestlinggear.com/wrestling-shoes/nike/

Visit WrestlingGear.com today to pre-order the newest 2013 wrestling shoes. Start budgeting for your favorites so that you can be prepared to hit the mat in style next season.

Want to win a free pair of wrestling shoes? Simply take five minutes to fill out our 2013 customer survey, and you will be entered to win a free pair of shoes from WrestlingGear.com.

And, if we get 500 responses, we will award three lucky winners a pair of wrestling shoes. So don’t keep this to yourself, get all your friends to fill out our survey.

It’s our goal to improve our offerings and ensure that we stock only the top brands, apparel and shoes that our customers want. The best way to find this out is for you to tell us. We want to make sure that our website is the best source for all the wrestling gear you need to perform your best.

We have wrestling in our blood, so we fully understand that the right equipment and gear is essential to being prepared and safe for any level of wrestling.

So, whether you’ve made a purchase with us, thought about it, or just want to help us improve our offerings, fill out our short customer survey.

Ready to give us your feedback? Fill out our 2013 customer survey for your chance to win a brand new pair of wrestling shoes.

Asics Wrestling Shoes

Asics is shaking things up this summer by retiring some wrestling shoes and revealing a number of new ones. We have over 10 pairs of Asics Wrestling Shoes available for pre-order. Check them out to read a description and see each new shoe in a variety of different angles. All of the shoes for pre-order will ship in July 2013.

Our favorites are the Aggressors LE 2 in camo as well as black and red plaid. We suspect these will be the must-have shoes this year, so order while you can.

Asics is retiring the Aggressors in the current colors of black/red, black/gold, royal/gold and grey/blue. In addition, the Red Omniflex and all current Mat Flex shoes in youth and adult will be retired. If these are your favorite shoes, you may want to snatch up a second pair while you still can.

adidas Wrestling Shoes

The folks over at adidas also have several new wrestling shoes coming out this upcoming season, the Combat Speed 4, the HVC, and the HVC Youth with and without laces. All are available in a variety of colors. The company also made some updates on existing shoes, like a new outsole on the Response 3.1, and several older models are available in updated colors.

All of the new adidas shoes are available for pre-order, and will ship around June 2013.

Nike Wrestling Shoes

While there’s nothing new or being retired from Nike, the Inflicts are in short supply this season. If you have your heart set on a blue pair, order while you can, as they are in high demand and there’s not too many to go around.

As the wrestling season starts to wrap up and companies start preparing for next year, we’ll continue to highlight new products. If we haven’t mentioned your favorite shoe or brand, visit WrestlingGear.com to view our full selection.

Which of the new Asics shoes are your favorites? Share below.

“We really enjoyed being a part of the 50th Annual Ken Kraft Midlands Championships,” said Jeff Pape, founder and owner of WrestlingGear.com. “It was a successful tournament and a very fun weekend. Congratulations to those who participated.”

Because this year we celebrated the 50th anniversary, the tournament was more than just your average wrestling tournament. There were special events and a very special Parade of Champions during which some of the original Midlands Champions were honored.

Midland fans voted Dan Gable the greatest Midlands wrestler of all-time. Gable, a legendary wrestler at Iowa State and coach at Iowa, was a six-time Midlands Champion. 66% of fans voted for him to win the contest, beating out four-time champion Cael Sanderson.

This year, Illinois was the tournament’s team winner, with Virginia Tech close behind in second place, and Oklahoma in third.

Check out some of the history of the famous tournament. What was your favorite part of this year’s tournament? Post below and let us know.

Original Midland Champions Roy Conrad and Denny McCabe were honored at the 50th Ken Kraft Midlands Championships.

Founder of the Midlands Championships, Ken Kraft, was honored at the 50th Ken Kraft Midlands Championship

Jason Welch of Northwestern is declared winner of the 50th Ken Kraft Midlands Championship.

The tournament will take place Saturday, Dec. 29th – Sunday Dec. 30th at Northwestern University and WrestlingGear.com has been selected to provide the official tournament t-shirt.

“WrestlingGear.com is a leader in wrestling supplies and we believe that their dedication to our sport is a primary reason that we chose them to design and produce the 50th Annual Midlands T-Shirts. We look forward to an ongoing relationship with Jeff Pape and WrestlingGear.com,” said Drew Pariano, Head Wrestling Coach at Northwestern University.

More than 30 Division I wrestling teams will participate, along with a number of Division II and III teams and post-graduate competitors. If you can’t make the tournament, you can watch Sunday’s finals live on the Big Ten Network.

To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the tournament, a number of special events are planned. A group of the original Midlands Champions from the first tournament in 1963 will be in attendance, and will be honored during the Parade of Champions.

For more information about the tournament, including recaps, visit: 50th Ken Kraft Midlands Championships.

Have you participated in the Ken Kraft Midlands Championship tournament? Post your tournament memories below.