City to 5-year-old: Want to sell lemonade? Get a license.

(This post originally appeared on The Washington Post)

The girl in question lived in Porterville, Calif. The infraction: unlawful selling of lemonade. Ladies and gentlemen, the story you are about to hear is true. No names have been changed to protect the innocent.

In what is probably one of the most unneighborly things a neighbor can do, the girl’s lemonade business was challenged this past summer when someone on her street spotted her hawking the juice, along with candy and other snacks, and quickly called in the crime to the local authorities.

She had already completed her profitable run, racking up enough coin to buy a new bicycle–all on her own. “It meant so much to know she earned her own money,” her mom told a local TV station Fox 26. “She got to bring her own wallet and buy it herself and pay at the cash register.”

But any hopes of her having a second profitable year were called into question when she received a stern letter this month from the Porterville Finance Department demanding payment for a business license related to last summer’s moneymaking activities. The letter was accompanied by a scanned copy of her mom’s proud Facebook post informing her friends and relatives of her daughter’s profitable accomplishment.

The city manager of Portersville, John Lollis, told the TV station this isn’t the first case of people challenging other evil capitalists in the area. “We got a few complaints about these stands over the summer,” he said. “Root beer float sales, too.”  okay, complaints about root beer I can understand. But a five-year-old selling lemonade? C’mon.

It turns out that city officials were remorseful. “There’s no excuse why it should have been sent,” Lollis told Fox 26. “It makes the city look bad.”

The reality is that the city of Portersville — like most cities — does not require a license for kids to sell lemonade, so our budding entrepreneurs really shouldn’t worry. It’s just that sometimes mistakes happen. Lollis and a city council manager personally tried to pay the girl a visit, but unfortunately she wasn’t home.