Show at Rumors shut down by police
Rumor has it (ha!) that Rumors was shut down by nearly a dozen police and ABC officials tonight. Current word is that the boutique failed to pay income tax on the revenue generated by their off hours shows. Update: Firstly, Rumors is still open for business. The show was shut down, not the business. The […]
Rumor has it (ha!) that Rumors was shut down by nearly a dozen police and ABC officials tonight. Current word is that the boutique failed to pay income tax on the revenue generated by their off hours shows.
Update:
- Firstly, Rumors is still open for business. The show was shut down, not the business.
- The officials had seen “flyers” around for the show and noted 5$ admission charges. They showed up and despite the “5$ suggested donation” sign served the owner with a summons.
Second update:
Casey, the owner has commented over at Fan of the Fan with some additional details:
I have had to cancel all shows, and we received a summons for “failure to report attendance taxes”. [removed at author’s request — Ed.]
Third Update
Casey has asked me to remove her comments while she deals with the legal issues.
Maybe someone with more law savvy can explain what is going on here. Honestly how much revenue could we possibly be talking about here?
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Ross Catrow
Founder and publisher of RVANews.
Notice: Comments that are not conducive to an interesting and thoughtful conversation may be removed at the editor’s discretion.
Here’s a good article from Style this week about Rumors and the other pseudo venues.
Whoaaaa that’s nuts. I mean, tax stuff is impossible to understand. Maybe it was an honest mistake? Maybe I’m kidding myself?
What do ABC officials have to do with failure to pay taxes?
They must make absolute peanuts, if anything at all, for their shows. There are a good amount of shows that have pathetic turn outs (if you can call them that?) where the touring acts may be able to supplement their gas money funds. As a ‘venue’, its incredibly small, and garners the attention of broke scene college students. Good luck getting a slice of that non-existent pie, 50, ABC, and IRS!
All shows have now been canceled. [removed at author’s request. — Ed.]
Couldn’t they have sent you a letter? Seems like an overreaction to me. Heck, the IRS thought I owed them 11k$ all the did was send me a letter and detailed instructions on how NOT to pay the eleven thousand dollars. No one was knocking at my door that’s for sure.
I heard we need to tax small independent shows so that Richmond can afford the Performing Arts Hole in the Ground.
Is that thing still there, or are we getting our rich person’s venue soon?
I would make the suggestion to not discuss this sort of thing in public online. Esp. knowing they’re obviously snooping around. But I’m a twitter wh*re so what do I know :)
Yeah, we’ve been forced to look at a massive brick wall at Broad and 7th for a long time now. The Center Stage website says “134 Days, 16 Hours, 50 Minutes, 38 Seconds until our Grand Opening!” But I digress.
I’m glad. I’ve tried to attend shows at Rumors and have been turned away because I didn’t bring cash to “donate.” C&M deserve this.
I one time made 120 dollars from donations while running a show there. None of it went to Rumors because when I tried to give them $20 they refused even that small amount.
Dear Richmond Police,
Thank you once again for keeping us safe. Thanks for wasting the tax money that it took to mobilize that many cops against a non-violent issue to secure tax funds that either don’t exist or wouldn’t be enough to pay for that one single mobilization. Thank you for never patrolling my neighborhood where there is REAL crime happening but managing to get my acoustic show at my favorite space canceled. You are so awesome.
The City has a 7% admissions tax. Every show at the National, Coliseum, theater, and music show has to pay it.
You don’t see it in the Ticketmaster B.S. fees or if you pay at the box office because the venues include it in the price. So if you sell out a show at the National and the door haul is 100,000, the City gets $7,000 of it.
Sucks.
The reason that ABC was included, is because they come out in a S.W.A.T. team of sorts that includes the Fire Marshall, Police, ABC, Tax People, etc.
They usually plan to hit up several “venues” in one night to bust them and see what codes or laws that the organization is not abiding by, regardless of what form of law it falls under. (Killing several birds with one stone if you will) They do make the attempt to hit up organizations and businesses that are promoting through flyers, posters, or have articles/ads in print media.
I am sure that they went to Rumors anticipating to bust you with serving alcohol without a license. Since they did not find alcohol on site, I assume, they wanted to find something else to bust you for.
I don’t think they know or care about the effect that they have on small businesses trying to do these small fundraising efforts to either help their community or just try to keep their own businesses afloat.
Most often, their presence shuts down another organization trying to do positive things in the community.
There is an easier and more tactful way to approach an organization about lack of compliance, instead of scaring the sh*t out of the business owners with the approach that they probably exhibited at Rumors.
I know that they are only doing their job, which is good, especially for reason’s of safety and such. We would probably not be making a big deal about them busting an organization that has a crappy mission or do not belong to our demographic of people.
Even though it sucks and we know that Rumors has not made hardly anything from this outside of street cred, they are right in doing so especially since you guys are not set up to have shows.
I am just sorry that it had to happen anyway.
its big govt. at work, thank the liberals, the road to hell is paved with good intentions
Hey Liberty, what kind of SUV will you be driving on the road to hell? I heard that the road is actually paved with the skulls of dead liberals. Big government has about as much to do with this topic as Doug Wilder did with transparent governing.
It would be a real stretch to say that this has anything to do with liberalism.
liberals believe the answer to every social problem is higher taxes and larger govt., consequently you get such a disproportionate response from the govt. to such a minor problem as a small club simply putting on a show. It cost more to pay the govt. bureaucrats to shut down rumors than the tax money and penalty money they hope to generate by enforcing the ridiculous laws our genius politicians have put on the books for every aspect of our lives. The question is-Do you believe in “give me Liberty or give me death” or “give me govt. or give me death”
if you are the liberty of which you speak, I choose death…
It’s true. Republicans are the all for small government. That’s why George W. Bush and the republican congress made our government so much smaller between 2000 and 2006!
@bopst- one less socialist moron is a good start, when your gone whos gonna lick the politicians boots as good as you do?
@justin- I’m not a republican, I think the whole political class is a bunch of leeches
I think we can safely say that Bopst wouldn’t lick anyone’s boot. Unless it was to make them feel uncomfortable.
Honestly how much revenue could we possibly be talking about here?
Exactly. More money was spent stopping the show than was probably brought in. Take Matt’s show for example. 120 bucks was made. 7% of 120 is a grand total of $8.40.
It simply is not worth the city’s time, money & effort to prevent Rumors from putting on shows.
Liberty is a pathetic troll
sorry if I offended you weak-minded liberals, I shouldnt pick on the mentally challenged
That’s OK. Nobody listens to you anyway.
Much like the absurdity of stopping performances at a taxpaying business for not paying income tax on the revenue generated by their off hours shows (that ultimately would amount to a few measly dollars for the city), your comments are fundamentally flawed, civically disingenuous and indicative of someone with clearly misplaced priorities.
give me crazed ranting or give me death
I put on a show there with a Grammy nominee the year he was nominated (it was a jazz musician…but still.) Everyone knows about the risk for having music in a non authorized venue, and I think the best course of action would be to get this law changed.
When I put on that show, I sold tickets at Plan 9 and at the door, and had the show promoted on the radio. Huge risk, but the cops weren’t scrounging for money then.
I don’t think it’s fair to make this a liberal vs. conservative thing, because these guys were just doing their jobs, and the laws have been on the books forever. I think that the liberal vs. conservative thing is more of a mindset that ensures that nothing will change. It does help lengthen comment threads though!
I find the whole liberal vs. conservative dichotomy out of whack anyway given the way those words have been bastardized over the years.
But let’s please leave that alone for now….
This sort of situation, the Rumors bust, has been happening in Richmond as long as I have been here. One of the effects is that it creates an atmosphere for promoters where you either operate totally off the record/illegal like and hope you get away with it, or you are a large corporate entity with enough money and political clout to not worry or act on any small problems that might jostle the status quo or revenue stream. Unless you are a large corporate entity, it does not pay to invest time and money into improving your operation, because you can be shut down at any time for almost anything.
This is very limiting and has held Richmond back. Its related to a regressive local tax code and a repressive educational, cultural, political structure marked by corporate hegemony and fear. I mean just look at this situation with Rumors accused of skimping on admission taxes, while Center Stage has committed all out fraud with our tax money! Yet who is shut down?
Until we start electing and recognizing different local leaders who are willing to stick their necks out, we are going to get the same ol’.
Speaking of CenterStage, it’s important to note they were able to pay at least $50,000 to sponsor a stage at this year’s Folk Festival (the minimum amount to sponsor a stage (the CenterStage Stage?)). As per their MO they refused to tell the RT-D exactly how much of our tax dollars they spent on the sponsorship.
At any rate, hopefully the City can recoup the $8.40 defrauded them by the illegal shows at Rumors.