Senate Bill 12 Update (7/6/2012) – Call to Action Today
Legislation[Latest Update from the California Escrow Association (CEA) – 7/6/2012]
This afternoon, the Assembly Revenue and Taxation Committee took up Senate Bill 12 for a second time. Regretfully, the bill received the five votes necessary to move out of the committee. Senate Bill 12 goes next to the Assembly Floor for a vote of the entire Assembly, after they reconvene from a month-long summer recess beginning Monday. Your phone calls and letters have already made a difference in the tenor of discussions about the bill; thank you. Now it is time to write and call again.
Write and Call Your Assembly Members
In the next few days, we ask that you continue to work alongside us in our ongoing efforts to defeat SB 12. Please write your Assembly Members and request their NO votes when Senate Bill 12 goes to the Assembly Floor. When you fax your letter (we recommend you use your Assembly Member’s Sacramento fax number), please also fax a copy to CEA Headquarters at 916-924-7323. If you do not receive a timely response from your Assembly Member’s office, please follow up with a phone call to inquire if they received your letter and to encourage a NO vote.
Please do this soon, ideally within the next week – there is no time like the present to let your legislator know how SB 12 will hurt you – as an escrow professional, as a small business owner, as a female- or minority-owned business – and how it will ultimately harm, not encourage, the sales of business that are currently facilitated by the bulk sales law. The bulk sales law provides an effective and predictable method of accounting and paying the claims of creditors at the time the cash is available, in the bulk sale escrow transaction, rather than waiting for delayed and uncertain collections.
Bulk sale escrow holders remit millions of dollars of taxes annually from business sellers to local county tax collectors, the State Board of Equalization, the Franchise Tax Board, the Employment Development Department, and the Internal Revenue Service. At a time when the finances of our state are at stake, what better time to retain the bulk sales law, when it results in the most efficient and effective manner of collecting those taxes, at no additional cost to the state. And at a time when our civil courts are increasingly underfunded and overburdened, the duration and costs of judicial remedies just don’t make sense, because currently the bulk sales law functions as intended to settle those accounts economically and without court intervention.
Please forward this to your like-minded escrow and business friends and colleagues and ask that they do the same. Every one of us needs to write that letter and make that phone call. Thank you.