Department of Revenue: Owners of Seized Store Owe $32,000

The Massachusetts Department of Revenue's seizure of Wayland's Photo Video Store in early April came after more than two years of attempting to collect back sales taxes.

Bob Bliss, a DOR spokesman, said the Photo Video Store first came to the attention of the DOR in August 2009. The store's owners, James and Lynn Piecewicz of Chelmsford, began receiving notices to pay back sales taxes in November of that year.

DOR collectors seized the Wayland business on Tuesday, April 3, according to Bliss. DOR records show the business to be delinquent on the payment of $32,071 mostly in sales taxes.

The 2.5 year span between the first notice to pay and the business' seizure isn't atypical, Bliss said.

“Seizing a business is a last resort as far as DOR’s process,” Bliss said, adding that only about 60-80 businesses throughout the state are seized annually. “It just reaches a point where the collections bureau feels there isn’t any other alternative.”

Bliss said a collections agent went to the shop with the owner last Friday and instructed the owner to remove all property from the store that did not belong to the business. According to the website for the Photo Video Store, the business does everything from photo restoration to camera equipment repair, so customer-owned items could presumably have been at the store at the time it was seized.

The owner was instructed to remove customer-owned items from the store and contact those customers in order to return their items. Bliss said any customer who had equipment or items at the store and has not been contacted about reclaiming those items should reach out to the storeowners directly

The DOR is meeting with the Photo Video Store owners Tuesday about establishing a repayment plan and making an initial down payment on the taxes due.

“The issue will be will the owners come back with some sort of offer to make a substantial downpayment on the tax owed and will they agree to a reasonable payment plan,” Bliss said. If an agreement can be reached, the store can reopen.

If those stipulations cannot be met, the next step is to auction the equipment that is in the corporation, that is anything owned by the Photo Video Store.

“We don’t want to auction anything that doesn’t belong to the corporation,” Bliss said, adding that it is the storeowner's responsibility to contact customers about claiming equipment or items from the store.