Your registered agent is just someone in another location that is authorized to accept mail for you. That's it.

How does this even slip through? For THREE YEARS? Part of it had to do with a quirk of how taxes work in reciprocity states like Wisconsin. Part of it was because state agencies don’t talk to each other. And implementation teams aren’t tax experts. And some payroll providers don’t have enough error flags for situations like this. And humans are flawed. They make mistakes.

Your dark and mysterious payroll past comes back into your life. Another notice. Something unreadable. You thought you'd left this all behind. But here it is again. Your pulse quickens. You're back under the tax agency's smoldering gaze. And this time, they won't take no for an answer.

Here's a rule of thumb: The best states to work in are some of the worst states to work with.

As an HR department of one, she’d created an environment where people loved to work. I was called in because they were having trouble with a few vendors. And as usual, the problem wasn’t the vendors, but how the company was using the tools.