Registering trade names

[woody649]

Or: No good deed shall go unpunished.


I made use of my COVID-19 stay-at-home time earlier this year by self-publishing three books. I used my name as the author but, rather than also using my name as the publisher I chose to honor my maternal great-grandparents and adopt as my "imprint" the name my great grandmother used for the property on which my house stands.
Something I read somewhere said that if you use an imprint, you should file with your town clerk to register the trade name. So I did that.


And a couple of days ago I received a form from the tax assessor, asking me to declare all the physical assets of the business -- so the town can tax them. The only physical assets I use in connection with the publishing are a 30-year old office desk and a seven year old computer that isn't up to snuff to run Windows 11, so it has essentially zero value. And the usage each gets that's related to the publishing is probably 10 percent or less of total use. These are my personal desk and computer.



I declared each with a depreciated value of zero and a residual value of $50. I'm sure I'll get an argument about that.

I shouldn't have registered the trade name. The unfortunate reality is that I have now probably opened the door to allowing the tax assessor to have a legal excuse to come into my private residence and start poking around for things she can tax.