Apologies in advance for the click bait title, but this is going to be a long post and video on what the future holds for myself as a person and for Belladonna’s Botanicals as a business it might sound dire at first, but things are actually getting better and will be changing for the positive so there’s your spoiler alert.
The Great Tax Saga
There has been a lot going on for the past four years that I haven’t talked about or at best skirted past the issue in passing, but these were major issues nonetheless. As it was discovered last year, when I consulted with a new accountant that my old accountants had been not doing my taxes correctly when it came to inventory. I will give you a quick explanation of what that means – I make products at the end of the year I have unsold products left over which is something that goes towards “cash on hand” as a business asset. However, they were also counting into my materials inventory which has no value as the IRS isn’t going to come and repossess half a jar of lavender flowers or a box of bottles. I don’t have assets like a fancy restaurant kitchen, a fleet of vans, etc., of which there would be value, nor is my business revenue in the range of which we would be counting those individual materials.
What this meant in 2021 is they looked at all those numbers at the end of the year and declared me to have $50,000 cash on hand (unsold inventory AND materials) and therefore was taxed on it as profit not loss. Last October, my new accountant filed an amended tax return for 2021 and it’s been a long process, but it’s starting to move. To reiterate how badly my old accountants fucked me over. I am receiving a refund from 2021 from the IRS for almost $23,000, but have to appeal a disallowance for almost $12,000 I paid that year between quarterly taxes and the payment plan that I have been on since then. I have outstanding potential refunds from the state and city taxes. This is a lot of money – I used to make that in a year at previous jobs and what not so this is not an insignificant sum of money. We still have to file 2022 and 2023 amended returns for all three as well.
Now we’re gonna start talking about the impact of all of the financial issues that were caused by my accountant is fucking me over for the past four years until I fired them last year basically for suggesting tax fraud as a solution to something that was too hard for them to do.
The Financial Burdens & Vindication Process
The financial losses have been staggering since this issue started in 2021. I have drained all of my savings from when I sold my house in Philadelphia in 2023. I have maxed out all my credit cards. I have drained all the retirement funds to stay afloat and not gonna lie this past year has been terrifying because I was teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, losing the business, housing, etc. as a result of this. I started doing a lot of financial restructuring last June and enrolled some credit card and medical debt to consolidate to pay things off and that it’ll be much easier now that I have the money coming back from these IRS refunds. It’s gonna take a while for the rest of them to come through, but it’s a start and it’s vindication.
I knew I was right. I fought them on it and they just patted me on the head like a little girl, this is just how taxes work and you know what I’m not an accountant. I'm not good with math. I have AuDHD features that make some things as such hard such as dyscalculia and dysgraphia – both greatly affect my ability to visually parse mathematical equations or do math in my head, etc. so I hired an accounting firm to do my taxes because I would assume that an accountant or accounting firm of CPAs would know how to do taxes apparently, I was wrong. It’s enraging because they never said ‘oh we can do an amended return.’ because this is an inventory issue or admitted any culpability in the process.
This accounting firm *almost* caused me to lose my business, to lose my housing, to lose my healthcare as a disabled person, and to have to file for bankruptcy thankfully, I’ve not had to do any of that, but I’ve been teetering on the edge of that for a while now and it’s been very stressful and it’s been negatively impacting my health overall. I have an autoimmune disease, chronic pain, and joint and mobility issues – and these things flare up from time to time and it’s very unpredictable.
The other issue is that this caused because of having to float so much on credit card depleting 401(k)’s keep the business afloat is that it put me in a work death spiral of constantly having to work nonstop because if I wasn’t working, I wasn’t making money and every month was running the gauntlet to get everything taken care of financially, but I was pushing myself way too hard because I couldn’t just go lay down when I was having a pain flare. I couldn’t just take a day off because my sensory issues were off the charts, I had to keep pushing through and pushing through and pushing through it wasn’t until over the holidays when I found myself getting annoyed at my fiancé for having the audacity to take naps and pain meds when he was in pain. We both have chronic pain and and issues, so we deeply understand each other, and our limitations based is such, but there was something that was sitting with me that was bothering me and it took me a while to realize –I was fucking jealous. I was jealous that when he was in pain, he could take something for pain and go lay down and take a nap for a bit to feel better. I did not have that option. I had to keep pushing through and pushing through and making things worse for myself.
I spent a good chunk of time over the holidays into early February having assorted breakdowns over things just as it all came to a head. I passed the point of no return and had to make some hard decisions and changes. It all was too much and every month I was just white knuckling it to get through to get everything paid to get all the orders out on time even when I was struggling to afford supplies and having to let bills slide and tanked my credit score into the ground.
Upcoming Changes for 2026
During one of these breakdowns my fiance asked me one simple question – Is the business worth saving?
I had to think about it – is the business worth saving because I can always rebrand and start something new because I am the business. The business in and of itself has absolutely no value. I am the one with the value and that is transferable in whatever I do, but it got me thinking on how I want to restructure the business going forward, especially now that I’m going to be receiving some of these funds and can pay down debts and restructure my life as a disabled person and a small business owner so this is going to involve a lot of changes going forward some of them I’ve already been implemented and I will go through each of these below.
Many of these decisions are not just financial, they are health related. I have an autoimmune disease - psoriatic arthritis and frequent chronic pain flares, joint and mobility issues, and peripheral neuropathy. The inflammation and pain flares hit my hands and my lower back the worst. I have been under treatment for it for a couple years now, but we are having to do some changes to my treatment plan which may involve moving from a (very expensive) prescription medication to an also very expensive infusion and injectables. I require a lot of medical attention, treatments, procedures, testing, and appointments. I need to shift and pivot a lot as a result and I need to take care of my physical health because my current state of existence is not sustainable.
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The first big change is that I let go of the physical retail space at Angel’s House of design. This is mostly due to being too disabled and unreliable to physically be at the shop due to medical procedures and treatments, pain, flares and disability and neurodivergent sensory stuff. I can’t always be a functional human being. We still have some of our candles and other things in the shop as a vendor. I don’t know how long we are gonna keep that way. I no longer do consignment stuff because it ties up a lot of my products sitting on shelves that may or may not sell. In the past, I’ve gotten things back that I’ve just basically had to trash because they got the labels worn, the stuff I’ve been sitting in non-temperature controlled environments, etc. Having a brick and mortar shop was the end goal and I long suspected that my body wouldn’t be able to handle it and thankfully I didn’t invest in hundreds of thousands of dollars into opening a business. I’m do not have any losses on that end, If I ever want to have a physical brick and mortar store in the future I’m going to need to be financially solvent to the point that I can hire people to work there full-time because I can’t handle being at the shop for more than like a day maybe two and then it’s pushing it and then I’m gonna be in a pain flare for weeks.
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The next big change is that I am retiring from vending at events and shows. I used to love doing events, but it is becoming an inducing endeavor because I have no idea how to plan for an event six months from now because who knows what my body is going to be doing to me I could be in a chronic pain flare that lasts three weeks and unable to use my hands very well or I could be in sensory overload or I can be pick one of the whack-a-mole options in what’s wrong with my body today so we will no longer be vending at events.
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There will be a lot of other changes over the course of 2026 two that will be coming up. I don’t have a timeframe for it yet, but I will be de-platforming most likely from eBay and Amazon to lighten my load a little bit more. I started selling on Amazon Handmade in 2018, but they merged it with regular Amazon last year and it’s absolutely horrible. Amazon forced our hand on automated shipping and handling times which forces us to either do same day or next day shipping and there’s nothing I can change about it even though I had set everything to be two day shipping and even that was a lot. Amazon is a convenience store so we have limited offerings and they are pricier than other platforms since we also had to accommodate “free shipping” fees because Amazon customers don’t want to pay them. I don’t have a timeframe yet for when we will de-platform from both eBay and Amazon –I will be doing some marketing around this to our Amazon customers so they don’t know where to find our products going forward.
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Other changes will be structural and process oriented changes. I’m evaluating our materials, possibly reformulating a few things here and there and looking at our sales and offerings in our permanent product catalog. I anticipate they probably will be some continued price changes I didn’t get through all of them last year right now I think the only things I have left to that and are repricing our Bath and body products and are made made to order offerings and will be moving a lot more things into longer processing times for that.
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I don’t know how our processing times will change yet, but I am 100% dedicated to prioritizing my health first. Some of this is going to depend upon how long it takes me to de-platform from Amazon because that’s what really messes up a lot of my my workflow is if I have to stop and make a batch of something because I need to send it out today on Amazon when I could schedule it at any time during the week but no, I have to stop and make it today. As it stands, we ship Monday through Friday and our processing times are 5 to 7 business days for most general products, We’ve moved more things to me to order custom those are 10 business days, and that includes things like perfumes, the bath salt jars, any type of made to order oil or other type of product. Our wholesale turnaround time is 11 to 14 business days. This is very much a work in progress. Some of this might change fast and some of it might be pushing into 2027 before it’s all said and done. We may also move to designated shipping days as in we ship on Monday;s, Wednesday’s and Friday’s. I’m just letting people know as far in advance as
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We no longer have our services on Etsy, but that is due to Etsy’s crack down on witchcraft services and readings so we just preemptively unlisted them to get ahead of it. I don’t know if we will be offering service offerings in the future. Outside of what we have from Vanessa Diamond and Lamia NightStorm.
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All of this gives me a chance to focus more on the things I do like such as writing and teaching so you’re going to see some more of that coming out because it’s easier for me to do some of that as it is to do the physical product shipping in hand handling, etc.
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You’ve probably seen a few changes already as we are starting to offer curated collections of books and Tarot/Oracle decks that pair well with our ritual products. We know that a lot of people have divested from the big box stores and Amazon so we would like to have offerings to bridge the gap and I have many wholesale accounts.
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I’ve also been selling some books, tarot/oracle decks, and ritual items from my private collection because I’m also getting married at some point in time probably this year so I have to make space for that and I have too much stuff.
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We may actually get that Patreon and Substack or whatever up and running because education is important and as much as I want to “monetize” my efforts, at the same time everything is paywalled into a corner so most of the information now tis just brain rot TikTok hot takes unpopular opinions, hot takes, and absolute bullshit narratives and gatekeeping without the foundational knowledge that is necessary in the occult so I’m looking for a way to create a ‘pay what you want’ kind of system or ‘pay it forward’ system because not everyone can afford to pay you know 100 different creators $10 bucks a month for their content like I can’t like yeah there’s a lot of Patreon and Substack. I would like to support you, but you know I can’t feasibly do so.
The Next Chapter
I’m excited to be able to rebuild the business from the ground up and in a way that is sustainable for myself as a disabled person. All I ask is for patience and kindness in this process. I can’t apologize, but every single time I get a nasty message why hasn’t this shipped yet other places to ship faster it just digs the knife in deeper. The point here being is I’ve been killing myself to keep this business afloat so every little nattering comment has just driven the knife deeper and last year I got to the point for the first time since I started running the business where I just said to myself ‘I don’t love what I do anymore’ and it’s not that I don’t love what I do. It’s having to deal with rude customers and the abuse we take as such – if you want to actually support small businesses and you actually care about woman / disability / neurodivergent owned businesses then don’t treat us like you treat Amazon or Walmart, but I digress. I’m excited about these changes. I’m excited about making life livable again.
The main focus for this year is going to be getting my health and my pain managed better because I was realizing last year as I was trying to do this I didn’t have enough time to do it and also being on the ACA I ended up getting a lot of medical debt as a result and I need constant medical attention for one thing or another. I have to focus on my health and that has to come first and foremost because I’m absolutely useless to anyone else if I can’t be healthy and take the time I need when I’m in pain to lay down or take something for it or to get injections and treatments and not have to keep pushing myself day after day through the pain. I need to slow down and in the rampant run away capitalism we convince ourselves that we need to have constant growth and I’m rejecting that I just want enough to be able to live healthy and keep the business afloat however that looks and to just not kill myself every day to make it so in restructuring and downsizing I’ll be able to do that and I am so I can’t even tell you I’m gonna have a live stream party when I delete my Amazon shop I’m not kidding!!
I’m happy that these things are finally now coming to an end in this cycle. It has been really hard. The tax fuckery impacted every aspect of my life, like an asteroid hitting in the middle of the ocean and wiping out all the coastlines in every direction well, which one do you fix first what’s worth saving etc.
There may end up being a malpractice lawsuit against the former accountants because I can’t do amended returns on 2020 and I’m pretty sure there was the same issue that year and then looking at all the loss like I could’ve been on Medicaid for the past four years and I couldn’t because they were reporting my income as too so the proof was in the pudding when I when my current accountant did my 2024 taxes and oh low and behold, I was able to stay on my ACA plan when by the 2023 income, I would’ve lost all of my subsidies and my insurance would’ve been almost $1000 a month. It’s still expensive and it still doesn’t cover much but at least it’s not $1000 a month.
This firm cost me so much of my sanity, my health, my time and my money I want there’s part of me that wants to walk away from it after all is said and done once I get this money back from the IRS in the city and state for 2021-23, but at the same time, I worry that I’m probably not the only person they’ve done this too. Beyond being vindictive I think that they need to be held accountable for their misactions. I’ve already spoken to a business lawyer about it and they’ve suggested a malpractice lawyer would be the best route to go for this. It’s hard to recoup damages, but I should know more in the next month or so. If I do end up filing a lawsuit against them. I probably won’t be able to talk about much of the details until after it’s done unless I sign an NDA.
One Day at a Time
I think that is the crux of it all there’s probably more and as far as changes going forward, keep following us. I’ve been writing more. Check out our blog. I’ve been doing a series called Dispatches from the Abyss. I’m looking at doing more video content again.
Trying to think of a way to wrap this up, but I’m terrible at wrapping things up, but I’m looking forward to the future. I’m looking forward to getting my ass out of debt and getting the business restriction and back on his feet properly and thank you so much for all your support over the years it is greatly appreciated.
Dark Blessings,
Ever and Always,
Jennifer (BellaJennyfur)