$50 is the typical transfer fee around my corner of the universe.
stagpanther said:
I was charged 50 smackers BTW. Even if it took a whole hour (which it didn't) and considering cost of goods, I'd say that's a pretty good profit margin.
Your calculation of profit margin omitted overhead. If the transfer is for a firearm that has already been bought and paid for, obviously the FFL has no cost of goods to consider. But he does have rent, utilities, insurance, and possibly other recurring costs to be paid out of the proceeds from the business, and then he needs something left over to call "profit."
Let's assume your FFL has a storefront, but for a month he doesn't sell any guns. He only does transfers, at one hour per transfer. Let's say he's open 8 hours a day, six days a week. That's 192 hours for the month. But it's unlikely he can do eight transfers every day for an entire month. Let's round down and call it 150 transfers. At $50 each, his total income for the month is $7,500.
Out of that he has to pay the rent, the electric bill, the phone bill, the heating and cooling bill, the water bill, advertising, insurance, and the monthly prorated portion of whatever business licenses he needs to stay in business. And he needs to pay himself a salary. What's a fair annual income for an FFL? How about $72,000? That's $6,000 a month. So if he's going to pay himself a reasonable wage, that leaves only $1,500 to pay all the other costs of doing business. It's highly unlikely that $1,500 will even come close to covering those expenses, but they have to be paid -- which means he doesn't take home $6,000 that month.
Where's the profit margin?
