things about paying sales and use tax for a small business on California’s state website

• you will get an email telling you the due date and where to pay it, and just what the penalties are for not paying it and how they will be collected via wage garnishment etc etc
• you technically do have a small business registered in california but it has not made shit in profits, like ever. But you remember from last year that they really really wanted you to file something anyway, even if it was just taking a guess at whatever tiny amount you might have made, or formally claiming you made zero money
• so you go to the site and try to log in. assuming your username and password still work, you will be asked where you want your 2-factor code sent.
• it claims you can do this via email. But if you open your email to get the code (and you do it in another tab or window of the browser, instead of a separate desktop mail client or by opening email on your phone) you will be told that you have “duplicated a tab or window” which is not allowed and you have to start over.
• assuming you have an email-capable smartphone, or a mail client, or you can take texts on your phone instead, you may now be able to log in
• if so, you will see that you have no notifications whatsoever. nothing on the website says that you owe any taxes. click the “file a return” or “make a payment” buttons and it will say you don’t even have “access to any accounts” let alone have taxes to pay on any of them
• HOWEVER you remember vaguely from last year that you had this same experience, and yet you kept getting more and more threatening emails and postal mail about being overdue on your payment. and you remember you did eventually figure out what you were (probably) supposed to do, it just took a while
• so you keep looking on their website
• they have pages and pages of tutorials on how to do each thing you have to do on that site. well. when i say tutorials i mean each one is a link to a youtube video.
• …luckily I am not technologically or physically incapable of watching youtube videos. i just… really hate it. really really really hate it. and am very very bad at absorbing and retaining information that I try to learn from a video.
• so. i will try.
• wish me luck
• dammit