A company can't have several employees and make only 30 grand? The employees are part of the cost. Plus, don't they have many teenage employees who make minimum wage (maybe even lower-off the books)?
Not likely. Even at $4/hour and 20 hours a week 'off the books' that's $80/weekx52 weeks $4000/year per person. 4 kids to sort, pack, ship, take phone/online/in store orders, deal with customers, process returns, and you're at over $16,000. They are in business in CA, they have to pay taxes, they have to account for the hours they are open, the money they take in, the money they pay out all has to be documented. Meaning they have to have staff around for the hours they are open. Staff isn't free, the IRS knows this. So they expect to see paychecks, taxes out of said checks. If the owner is out buying collections, setting up at the bigger shows, taking out large ads in Tuff Stuff, Beckett, and/or SCD, those ads can run into 4 figures per issue, someone has to be running the store 'on the record'. If you're spending $200,000 a year on buying, advertising, salaries, business costs, and clearing only $30,000 a year in Burbank, CA, where a quick google search points out a median house cost of $595,000 and a median family income of $61,447 that means you run one of the biggest card shops in the country and you haven't even made half what the average family makes. The math just doesn't add up.