We have seen this scenario before:
Husband and wife work. Husband and wife are busy taking children to soccer, softball and baseball games, doing yard work and participating in social activities.They want a clean house and spend some time cleaning it. But their busy schedule means they need a periodic assist to keep their house the way they want it.
Hiring a domestic worker can bring trouble in the form of tax penalties that were evident when attorney general nominee Joe Baird withdrew and Adm. Bobby Ray Inman didn't become secretary of defense. They hired illegal domestic help, a practice the Internal Revenue Service says plagues about 1 million people in the United States.
Rather than hiring domestic help, some people are turning to companies like Molly Maid, an Ann Arbor, Mich., company that establishes franchises. Salt Lake native Brian Bardsley has the Molly Maid franchise for Salt Lake and Summit counties and is located at 2046 E. Murray Holladay Road.
"The demand for maid services is exploding due to today's high number of two-career families," said Bardsley. "At the same time, recent news events have educated consumers they could face tremendous tax liabilities if they're not paying payroll taxes on the people who work in their homes," he said.
Companies like Molly Maid, which hires the domestics and sends them on cleaning jobs, protects consumers from the liability of paying taxes by meeting all federal, state, county and city payroll tax requirements.
"One of the biggest misconceptions among homeowners is that if they pay the lady down the street $40 to clean their house and when she doesn't report her earnings to the IRS, it's her problem," said David McKinnon, Molly Maid presi-dent.
"Federal law is very clear. If you hire domestic help and pay them more than $50 over three months, you are responsible for withholding the appropriate taxes and reporting income to the IRS. Nobody wants the hassle or the risk, so Molly Maid takes care of this for the customer," said McKinnon.
About 14 months ago, Bardsley invested several thousand dollars in his franchise and went to Ann Arbor for a week of training so he could learn how to run a Molly Maid franchise. In addition to learning how to keep the books, Bardsley learned how to give estimates, buy supplies and did some cleaning with a quality assurance team looking on.
When he returned to Salt Lake City, he placed some newspaper advertisements for cleaning employees. The ones he hired trained while cleaning his house and the houses of relatives and friends. Once the employees were trained, he started advertising for customers.
Bardsley started with two employees and how has 13, which includes six two-person teams and an office manager. Each team drives a car that displays the Molly Maid logo to the cleaning assignment. Each employee wears a blue dress and white apron so they look the part of a maid, he said.
Most of Bardsley's 260 customers have their houses cleaned every two weeks, but some have it done weekly and others want their house cleaned monthly. The maids usually clean the bathrooms, bedrooms and kitchens by dusting and vacuuming, but some customers want their refrigerators cleaned, also.
The first time Molly Maid does a job, Bardsley charges by the hour to get a feel for how long it will take, but after that is is usually a flat rate. Because many of the husbands and wives are working during the day, Bardsley has the keys to the houses of 85 percent of his customers and feels that is a sacred trust between the company and its customers.
Although Bardsley is required to clean houses according to Molly Maid's standards, he isn't confined to any particular piece of equipment or cleaning products. He uses heavy-duty vacuums, all-purpose glass cleaner, bathroom deodorizers, cloth diapers and sometimes even uses vinegar in water.
Being in the cleaning business wasn't exactly what Bardsley had in mind when he received a bachelor's degree in political science from the University of Utah. He and his wife talked about going into business, but his father, Stan Bardsley, offered him a job with Crossroads Oil Co., managing the books.
Crossroads eventually became a public company in England but maintains its headquarters in Salt Lake City while drilling for oil on the coast of the Gulf of Mexico. He started with Crossroads while in his last quarter in college, feeling it was good business experience.
Late in 1993, Bardsley decided it was time to enter the business world on his own. He looked at several business opportunities and also examined several franchises in the Franchise Opportunity Guide, including travel agencies and fast-food operations.
In the guide he saw a large picture of a vehicle with the Molly Maid name on the side and two employees standing by in their neat uniforms. In February 1994 he attended Molly Maid's "discovery day" in Ann Arbor and discussed the possibility of having a franchise in Salt Lake County.
Because the company provided good support for its franchisees and required a relatively small investment for the potential involved, Bardsley made a decision to go with Molly Maid a month after returning from Ann Arbor. He feels the operation has potential because of the growing population in Salt Lake and Summit counties and the large number of people moving into the area from out-of-state.