It's no secret that I'm currently overseeing the transition of the buyout of a scrap yard. I've talked about it plenty over the last month. This task, however, should be coming to an end soon. Should.
I say SHOULD now because things changed in a rather dramatic way this morning. When we'd originally made the deal, it was made clear on our end that in order for the deal to go through the way the buyer wanted, we wanted to pursue an asset sale as well as a share sale. (The whole thing was VERY complex, let me tell you.)
ANYWAY... so, this morning I sent an e-mail over to the new owner like "Hey, we need you to inject some cash here because we've already sunk $300K into purchases for the month of April, and we need to pull the cash owed to us before we close things up."
Response: There will not be a share purchase, please adjust.
Me: -.- (that's my annoyed face, by the way)
(Oh, also I should point out that I'm writing this on my personal blog because I'm not sure who all knows about my professional one, so I'm just keeping this on the DL.)
Okay, so back to the story... after going over all of this with my Girl Friday, she explained what the tax ramifications would be for this, and the partner and I said OK, whatever, let's just get this done. Honestly, it was going to make our end-game a lot simpler, and I was cool with that. I'd get to keep the domain, the company, etc.
But here's the kicker:
Are you ready for it?
The new owner, despite growing up in, living, working, and running MULTIPLE businesses within the province, didn't factor in the PROVINCIAL SALES TAX on all the assets. That's close to half a million EXTRA that he'd have to dole out this Friday.
To make that kicker all the more fun, that's put a question on the table of if he's even going to be able to make it happen.
Come Friday, if I don't have a cheque in my hand, I'll be sticking around here a while longer to train someone to run the office, as that will mean that the deal isn't going to get done.
This whole thing has been one heck of a rollercoaster. From the very first whiff about being bought out by the large corporation to where we are now, there has been nothing but ups and downs and spins and turns and a lot of nausea and screaming.
Right now, it has me in a major state of anxiety. Last night after my talk with my Girl Friday about the end game process, my anxiety left me tossing and turning, thinking about serial numbers and invoices and bank recs. Tonight, I'm writing this post in an attempt to disengage and debrief, and I'm not sure it did much more than stir up more anxiety. And I don't even know what I'm anxious about. If the deal is finalized, good. If not, oh well, we will make things work, the staff will be joyous - heck I might even throw a "welcome back" party for myself.
I'm trying hard to embrace the "que sera sera" and logically I know everything will work out whichever way things swing, but after months, years even, of dealing with this back and forth, it's taken a toll on me.
I think I need a moment.