Has Obama Become a Centrist and Corporatist, and Sold Out the Average American?

Posted on January 24, 2011 by William Brighenti

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On MSNBC tonight, January 24, 2011, Cenk Uygur discussed President Obama’s expected coalition with big business to create jobs here in America, anticipating its expression in his State of the Union Address scheduled for tomorrow night.  Cenk Uygur fears that Obama will follow the same old Clinton and Republican path of giving tax breaks and subsidies to multinational corporations in hopes that such will, in turn, create jobs here in America, even though such policies have not worked under President George Bush and the advent of globalization.

What follows is a transcript of the show, featuring an interview with Robert Reich, former Secretary of Labor under President Clinton.

Cenk:  Tomorrow night the President is expected to talk about his pro business agenda in the State of the Union.  This is supposed to be part of his effort to create more jobs here.   But does that make sense?   According to the Economic Policy Institute, American companies created more than 2 million jobs in 2010.  Fantastic, right?  But it turns out fewer than half of them were created here in America.  It turns out 1.4 million of them were created outside of the United States.

I actually don’t blame the companies.  They’re not American companies.  They are multinational. They’re going where there’s cheap labor and lower costs.  Some are going, like GM are going, where the new consumers are.  China in this case.  This year, GM sold more cars in China than in the U.S.  But it was U.S. taxpayers who bailed them out.  That’s my point.  Helping so-called U.S. companies doesn’t necessarily help the average American.  These companies are now multinational corporations with no obligation to the American people whatsoever.

The Republicans say if we give big business everything they demand, that will help American workers.  But a great piece in the National Journal (“State of the Union: Economy”) shows that’s not true at all. 

Look, quote, here’s what they say:  “Rapid advancements in technology and the opening of new international markets paid dividends for American companies, but not for American workers.”  It’s been good for business, but bad for you.

Here’s what happened with jobs while multinationals were making record profits.  Quote:  “Job growth in the 2000s was the lowest of any decade ever recorded by the Federal government….” and quote:  “Real middle class incomes fell from 2000 to 2007… another first in U.S. record-keeping.” 

That’s amazing.  We were told that if we just give big business what they want, they would hire here, and we would be better off.  That proved to be untrue.   So why is the president getting ready to make the same case tomorrow night?  And a democratic president at that?  Those are important questions.

Joining me now to help me answer some of those questions is Robert Reich.  He’s former Labor Secretary of President Clinton.  He’s a professor at UC Berkeley, and the author of “After Shock — the Next Economy in America’s Future.”  Secretary Reich, it’s a great pleasure to have you here tonight.  And let me start by asking you about this concept of U.S. businesses.  Is there really any such thing left?

Reich:  Well, no, not many.  There are small businesses that are U.S. businesses.  They are employees, they are shareholders, if they have any.  Certainly their customers are U.S.-based, but increasingly, large American businesses are going global.  They’re international entities.  They get their supplies all over the world.  They have customers all over the world.  Their investors increasingly are also all over the world.  They may have their headquarters here in the United States, but that the’s not necessarily where they’re making their money. 

And the question that you raise is going to be a very central question in the next decade.  Why is it that we should defer to the needs and wants and wishes of American businesses, particularly big businesses, when, in fact, their goal, to make money particularly for their shareholders, may not have anything to do, or even the remotest linkage, to the wages and the well being and certainly the job growth of Americans here back in the United States.

Cenk:  So we were told for the last 30 years, but certainly for the Bush years 2000 to 2008,  that if we just give them more tax breaks, if we just give them subsidies, give them x, y and z, they will create the jobs here.  Now, did that not happen?  And if it didn’t happen, have any of our politicians learned that lesson?

Reich:  Cenk, it did not happen.  It’s important to understand this.  American companies, big American companies, are making a lot of money.  In fact, they’re sitting on about $1 trillion of cash.  The problem is they’re making the money by selling abroad, not necessarily selling from the United States.  They’re selling from their operations abroad.  They’re also making a lot of money because they’re actually reducing their costs here in the United States.  The biggest cost they have in the United States is their payrolls.  So they have been fighting unions, they’ve been outsourcing abroad, they’ been replacing workers in the United States with automated machinery. 

Don’t get me wrong: I’m not blaming them, because, as you said before, companies exist to make money.  They don’t exist to create jobs.  We’ve got to keep that distinction very, very clearly in front of us.  Do American politicians understand this distinction? Good question. I don’t think a lot of them do.  A lot are even still mesmerized by the idea that somehow American competitiveness is the same thing as the profitability of American companies.

Cenk:  Secretary Reich, I know about the Republicans.  You know, you follow it day in and day out and they vote for these guys and they vote for the tax breaks every single time, right? So I view them as a wholly owned subsidiary of multinational corporations.  So that’s not the question.  The question is we have a Democratic president who is about to give a State of the Union here. And he seems to be buying into that ideology.  It looks like he’s going to try become “centrist”, which these days just means corporatist.  And it looks like he’s going to say all right, I give into big business. I’m going to work with the Chamber of Commerce.  And we’re going to do all the things the Republicans said.   Doesn’t that sound like not just a bad idea policy-wise, but a bad idea politically basically saying the other side is right.

Reich:  It is a bad idea politically.  Politically it’s very important for any president, Democratic or Republican, to hold out the welcoming mat to big business, to make sure he’s not perceived as being anti-business, but at the same time, you’re right.  There’s a danger here if a president, particularly a Democratic president that has a constituency that’s different from the Republicans’ constituency, that’s basically the working people of America, says over and over again that the interest of big business is the same as the interest of working people in America.  A lot of people are going to get confused by that message.  And particularly if a president starts believing it. 

We must not be seduced.  This is the bottom line.  I hope the president is not seduced.  We must not be seduced by the idea that the interest of big business, which is global, and making money, is the same thing as the interests of average American working people or people who are out of jobs.  It’s no longer the same thing.  It might have been the same thing, you know, when Engine Charlie Wilson, the head of General Motors who came into the Truman administration, said the interest of GM is the same as the interest of America.  It’s not the same thing any longer.

Cenk:  One last thing on this real quick, Secretary Reich.  If President Obama keeps going down this path that has proven to not work over the last ten years, where you just give to big business and they don’t create jobs here, are we going to be able to create any jobs over the next two years?  And if we don’t, is the President in massive trouble for his re-election?

Reich:  This is the critical political piece.  The President understands.  I’ve met the president a few times.  I have met a lot of people around him.  I’m in contact with him.  I know that he and his advisers understand they’ve got to bring down unemployment.  They’ve got to show by the election, 2012, that we’re going in the right direction. and and we’re going in the right direction in a very fast way.  The jobs are being created in the United States.  

So the President has to use whatever leverage he has with the business community to create jobs here.  That means every tax break he gives to business, he has to get a reassurance back from businessthat  they’re going to use those tax breaks to create new jobs here.

Cenk:  Yeah, I think that’s the answer right there.  It’s one thing to give them money but it’s another thing to say go spend it wherever you like.  If we’re going to give them money, if we’re going to give them breaks, they’ve got to spend it here.  Otherwise, no deal.

Reich:  It’s got to be a quid pro quo.

Cenk:  Absolutely.  Thank you so much, Secretary Reich.  We really appreciate you joining us tonight.

Reich:  Thanks, Cenk.

End of interview with Robert Reich and Cenk Uygur’s commentary, “Obama Reaching Out to Big Business”.

Obviously Reich and Uygur are not Certified Public Accountants.  We know, as CPAs, that if you wish to compel someone or an entity to comply with another’s goals or wishes, that you must employ the carrot-and-the-stick approach.  In this case, the only way of compelling businesses to create jobs here in America would be to raise taxes significantly in a progressive fashion, and then offer significant, offsetting tax credits for jobs created in this country.  To offer tax breaks and subsidies under a mere gentleman’s agreement that big business, in turn, would create jobs here in America is not only naive, but economically irrational.  Corporations are not gentlemen and operate under no moral code, except that of maximizing profits for its shareholders.  They are motivated strictly and entirely by the bottom line.  They have no morals or patriotism.

It is the Barefoot Accountant’s position that President Obama, through his Neville Chamberlain’s appeasement approach, has become a centrist and corporatist, adopting this position to win re-election in 2012.  It is also the Barefoot Accountant’s position that President Obama has forsaken the average American’s economic plight for his own political future.

The Barefoot Accountant

William Brighenti, Certified Public Accountant, Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor

Accountants CPA Hartford, Connecticut, LLC

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The 10 Commandments of CPAs

Posted on January 20, 2011 by William Brighenti

The Barefoot Accountant Receiving the 10 Commandments for CPAsThe Barefoot Accountant’s Ten (10) Commandments of CPAs

(As told to the Prophet, the Barefoot Accountant, by the Lords of Public Accounting, after many years of sweat, slavery, and servitude at public accounting firms in the Valley of Tears of Hartford County, Connecticut)

 

I. Thou shalt always hire employees that show well.

Never hire nerdy looking accountants.  Always hire attractive personnel, even if they are not the best accountants in the world.  People are superficial, including clients, and will judge you more by appearances than a few errors committed by a curvaceous staff member.  In addition, good-looking employees are so much more pleasing to gawk at, since you’ll be spending most of your time in the office with them, when they are not out in the field being gawked at by your clients.

II. Thou shalt not pay thy employees by the hour.

Never pay them by the hour:  the over-time will kill you.  Always pay them a salary so you can work them slavishly 80 hours per week during tax season without paying a shekel extra.  Learn from the Pharoahs.  Build your pyramid of success upon the sweat of slave labor.

III. Thou shalt always dangle a carrot to staff.

Always promise your employees the opportunity of partnership in order to pay them less and retain them longer.  Of course, as most experienced staff have discovered only after many years of toil and thousands and thousands of hours of overtime without a dime to show for it, you can always find an excuse later not to deliver—or, at least, to delay— on your promises of partnership.  As the most astute partners of public accounting firms have known and practiced for years with the dexterity of a politician promising the world to a gullible constituency, always discuss the far-off distant partnership opportunity in the most general terms, always hiding the sordid details, namely, that the aspiring staff member would be required to buy you out at a ridiculously exorbitant price, necessitating the mortgaging of his home, wife, and first born.  And lest ye forget, promises cost nothing.

IV. Thou shalt always get a retainer.

Accounting Tax RetainerIf possible, try to get full payment up-front.  If your clients are struggling paying taxes to keep their home and stay out of jail, what makes you think they will pay you upon completion of your services?  And even if your clients do pay you, it may be years before you recover all of the monies, well after you have been driven into bankruptcy because of your trickling cash inflow.  Consequently, never do any work on credit.  Why work for the sake of working?  Remember always you’re doing it for the money, not for love.  (If you want love, get a dog.)  It is always better to have no work than a ton of work for which you will receive no payment.  Get the moolah ASAP.

V. Thou shalt not quote a fixed rate.

Never Quote a Fixed FeeNever quote a job for a fixed rate.  Avoid committing yourself to a fixed fee—or, for that matter, to anything in life—unless there is absolutely no alternative; however, if you rack your brain or someone else’s long enough, you are bound to find an alternative!  If a client insists on a quotation—and only after you have run out of every known ruse employed by scoundrels since the beginning of time—give an “estimate”, allowing you to squirm out of that amount later and squeeze every remaining drop out of your client.  Always remember that you are a professional, just like lawyers and doctors, who are experts in over-charging and gouging.  Did you ever receive a fixed quotation for a triple by-pass procedure?  Take heed.  Learn from the pros.

VI. Thou shalt not answer thy telephone. 

Never answer the telephone at your public accounting firmClients call you so they won’t be charged for picking your brains.  And no one enjoys being billed for telephone conversations:  that’s why attorneys are despised by everyone, including their wives!  Always have your receptionist screen your calls or hide behind voice mail, and if forced to return calls, pick the time when your clients are least likely to be available, e.g., at 7:00 AM in the morning.  And end your message with the ever-effective deterrents, “I haven’t received your retainer yet” or “when can I expect you to drop off a check for your overdue balance”.  That’ll stop their persistent, annoying, and mooching calls for sure.

VII. Thou shalt charge as much as thou can.

As a CPA always charge as much as you canNever compete on price.  If you charge less than your competitors, your clients will think they are getting less.  Clients believe that idiotic saying, “You get what you pay for” (I prefer the much wiser saying, “A fool and his money are soon parted”).  So if you save them a ton of money, they will, of course, think they are getting less.  Furthermore, when you get more money for your services, you will feel better, and your spouse will say nicer things about you and appreciate you much more at the end of the day:  frankly, isn’t this ultimately why we work as slaves all day?

VIII. Thou shalt not jeopardize thy license to practice public accounting.

Never let a client con you into jeopardizing your license.  Be vigilant for fraud when preparing tax returns and audit reports.  Your clients won’t respect nor appreciate what you’ve done for them, even when you are carted off to jail.  If they insist on being crooked, let them go to jail rather than you…unless you secretly desire Buster as a cell-mate.  If you do, seek professional help quickly.  I pity you.

IX. Thou shalt not volunteer thy services.

Never volunteerNever volunteer to be the treasurer of an organization.  Nonprofit organizations often attract board members unable to secure full-time employment and, consequently, have nothing better to do with their time than spout crazy and impractical courses of action for the organization, driving you completely mad with all of their nutty ideas.  If these individuals were practical, they would be gainfully employed and not wasting their time serving on boards of nonprofits.  More importantly, you’ll end up working for free, and you won’t obtain any business from doing so, especially from the organization itself.  Furthermore, if you attempt to straighten out the finances of the organization, you may generate a bad press for yourself from the very members causing the mess from their repeated dippings into its till.  Charity begins at home and at your public accounting firm.  So never volunter.  Read my article, “1,001 Excuses to Give to Nonprofit Organizations Asking You to be their Treasurer” to weazle out of their repeated requests.  And stop feeling like Mother Theresa of the Missionaries of Charity, unless you want to practice public accounting in Calcutta.

X. Thou shalt not pay for promises.

Never pay for marketing promisesDon’t pay for any marketing services promising you fantastic results.  Marketers (now more commonly referred to as “spammers”) typically promise the world, guaranteeing everything but delivering nothing but a big bill, typically charged to your credit card or withdrawn directly out of your business checking account.  That’s their job!  And that’s why they make so much more money than CPAs!  Marketers are experts at selling, conning you out of every remaining shekel in your pocket.  They promise, even guarantee, to obtain you leads and new clients, only to make 1,001 excuses later, always passing the blame onto you for their failures.  Learn from them!  And do unto others as they do unto you:  turn the con back onto the con artist by promising—better yet, guaranteeing—to pay these marketers a commission on any clients obtained from their efforts, but only after those clients have paid you.  This reverse-con ploy has been found to be the most effective spam killer yet, especially from all of those marketers from India and the Philippines, who have yet to have been provided a suitable script in English in order to reply persuasively.  Enjoy the moment of frustrating the hell out of them, listening to their rote, repetitive, non sequitur ”pwomises” and “gwuaranteeeeeeeeees”.

This article is provided for informational purposes and is not intended to be construed as legal, accounting, or other professional advice.  For further information, please consult appropriate professional advice from your attorney and certified public accountant.

Have a tax or an accounting question?  Please feel free to submit it under “Comments” at Accounting, QuickBooks, and Taxes by the Barefoot Accountant.  For information and assistance on any tax and accounting issue, please visit our website:  Accountants CPA Hartford, LLC.

If and only to the extent that this publication contains contributions from tax professionals who are subject to the rules of professional conduct set forth in Circular 230, as promulgated by the United States Department of the Treasury, the publisher, on behalf of those contributors, hereby states that any U.S. federal tax advice that is contained in such contributions was not intended or written to be used by any taxpayer for the purpose of avoiding penalties that may be imposed on the taxpayer by the Internal Revenue Service, and it cannot be used by any taxpayer for such purpose. The above tax advice was written to support the promotion or marketing of the accounting practice of the publisher and any transaction described herein. The taxpayer recipients of this offering memorandum should seek tax advice based on their particular circumstances from an independent tax advisor.

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Is accounting really boring, or has virtually the entire human race just been getting it all wrong since the beginning of time?!

Posted on January 20, 2011 by William Brighenti

Spock the Vulcan CPAI’ve noticed on Twitter a bunch of tweets from younger people complaining that accounting is boring. This may very well be true for those who are not accountants. Non-accountants include those individuals who once loved accounting until they took, and were flunking, intermediate accounting in college and then switched their major to marketing, a much less challenging discipline than accounting, to say the least. I suspect that they are the main culprits spreading this libelous fiction on Twitter that accounting is boring (and, by implication, that CPAs are nerds, but that is an entirely different libelous fiction, for which we in class action intend to sue).

Don’t you remember when the Marketing Department would sponsor a Halloween Costume Party, and would add a handwritten note at the bottom of your invitation saying, “just come as you are: you don’t need a costume”? Marketing people can be so petty and mean spirited. They call themselves Marketers, but we accountants know what they really are: salespeople! Don’t you just hate salespeople?! Doesn’t everybody hate salespeople, except salespeople? (But then, I have heard, that on occasion they are not so fond of salespeople either, especially when they find themselves the recipients of a plethora of sales calls during the dinner hour.)

There are two schools of thought as to why some individuals, when stroking a debit or a credit, experience ecstasy and others vomit before suffering a cardiac arrest. The Pavlovian Institute of Salivation Studies (aka, PISS) asserts that CPAs love accounting because of the presence of a gene that non-CPAs lack. They based their findings on a series of tests conducted on 100 Russian female CPAs with thick ankles, who both sweated and salivated while debiting and crediting all night long.

On the other hand, the Freudianists argue that there is no such gene; rather, they argue one’s love or hatred of accounting stems from early childhood experiences, basing their argument on Freud’s theory found in his “Masochistic Pleasure Principle”, which asserts that anyone experiencing ecstasy while reading tomes of FASBs, GAASs, Regs, Codes, etc., must have experienced in early childhood both the Electra and the Oedipal complexes, resulting in a very confused, sad, miserable human being. As we all know, Freud himself was a very confused, sad, miserable human being, which explains why he was such an excellent accountant although he kept confusing the terms debit and credit as he did the sexes and the entire civilized world for over a century; however, he did rake in millions of shekels from all of his nutty theories as well as from all of those sexually repressed, nutty idiots who believed them, again attesting to his love of accounting.

Initially I believed that that Masochistic Pleasure Principle theory accounted for my love life in college. Women that I dated in college while pursuing my accounting degree lapsed into comas, never to be heard from again. Frankly, I found that behavior strange, if not down right rude. That Houdini phenomenon puzzled me for a very long while, thinking it was due to my cologne. But then one night while I was reading a passage from FASB 8 to my date at the drive-in movie, it occurred to me—after feeling a draft coming from the passenger side of the car as a result of its door being left wide open—that perhaps not everyone shared my passion for accounting. And I was right!

It was then that I came to the realization that our love or hatred for accounting stemmed not from any Freudian psychoanalytic theory based on mommie and daddie sex (although I swear that my CPE notes on accounting and auditing have enhanced my virility much more so than that viagra that I have been taking daily for 10 years) but rather on our hitler-birthdaygenetic code. After reading that earth-shattering genetic treatise, “Mein Kampf”, written by a somewhat controversial Austrian social-engineering theorist — who advocated genetic cleansing to the nth degree of infinity — I reached the conclusion that either you’ve got the good genes or you don’t have the good genes. If you’ve got the good genes, you definitely love accounting and would never, ever find it boring. If you don’t have the good genes, you are a loser and you will always find accounting and accountants boring.

kirk-spock-tribblesAs CPAs, we have the good genes and therefore belong to an elite, master, Aryan race, similar to the Vulcans, of which Spock is an exemplary example as well as an excellent accountant. Do you recall that it was only Spock who counted the number of Tribbles in the episode, “The Trouble with Tribbles”? No small coincidence there.

Conclusion: those who lack this gene are inferior to us accountants and are in really big trouble, according to the author of “Mein Kampf”, whatever his name is.

I hope that this article has shed some light on why all those morons out there in Twitter Land find accounting so boring.

This article is provided for informational purposes and is not intended to be construed as legal, accounting, or other professional advice. For further information, please consult appropriate professional advice from your attorney and certified public accountant.

Have a tax or an accounting question? Please feel free to submit it to William Brighenti, Certified Public Accountant, Hartford CPA Accountants. For information and assistance on any tax and accounting issue, please visit our website, Accountants CPA Hartford, and our blog, Accounting and Taxes Simplified.

If and only to the extent that this publication contains contributions from tax professionals who are subject to the rules of professional conduct set forth in Circular 230, as promulgated by the United States Department of the Treasury, the publisher, on behalf of those contributors, hereby states that any U.S. federal tax advice that is contained in such contributions was not intended or written to be used by any taxpayer for the purpose of avoiding penalties that may be imposed on the taxpayer by the Internal Revenue Service, and it cannot be used by any taxpayer for such purpose. The above tax advice was written to support the promotion or marketing of the accounting practice of the publisher and any transaction described herein. The taxpayer recipients of this offering memorandum should seek tax advice based on their particular circumstances from an independent tax advisor.

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10 Things Accountants Don’t Tell their Clients

Posted on January 20, 2011 by William Brighenti

When I was in college studying to become an accountant, I had a lofty opinion about certified public accountants and their profession. I regarded them as the “good guys”, professionals in the truest sense of the word, purveyors of truth, justice, and the American way. They were, at the very least, the Joe Fridays of my day, wanting “just the facts, ma’am”, the financial facticians, the modern day Galahads and Percivals.

But just because we seek out financial facts doesn’t necessarily mean that we are without sin, honest to a fault, fully and fairly disclosing all to our clients. Unlike Joe Friday, who has a governmental job and frankly doesn’t care if he ever again encounters the nuts whom he interrogates on Dragnet, we do care: our clients are our bread and butter, and—though we demand facts and wish to know all—on occasion out of concern for self-preservation, some of us do not always willingly and fully disclose all of the “facts”, in turn, to our clients.    For instance, here are 10 things we fail to tell our clients.  The list is obviously not all inclusive, since decorum necessitates keeping our catalogue clean:

  1. “You must have wined and dined half the population in Cleveland last year.

”OK, you might question the declared amounts under meals and entertainment and remind them about the need for documenting who, what, when, where, and why for the meals and entertainment, including that ski lodge in Vermont, but do you confront them, and tell them that they are, quite frankly, lying through their teeth?

2.   “You drove around the globe three times on business trips last year.”

Again, aren’t you far too reluctant to question the business use of their autos, being satisfied with a log of lies to substantiate the world travel of a Howard Hughes? So much for Joe Friday, truth, justice and the American way.

3.    “I could be the worst accountant in the world and you wouldn’t know.”

But the Internal Revenue Service does. Recently a study conducted by the IRS showed less significant errors on returns prepared by taxpayers than by us professionals. Don’t believe it? Here’s a simple test: take a set of client books requiring significant adjustments and give them to two different accountants in your office. Have them compile financials and prepare tax returns without any assistance from you, and then compare the apples to the oranges.

4.   “You suck at your business.  Have you considered early retirement?”

Aren’t you a financial advisor? Shouldn’t you analyze that P&L, interpret it, and see the forest from the trees? Shouldn’t you present the big picture and tell your clients that perhaps they should have considered the priesthood after all? The truth hurts, but bankruptcy and living on the street hurt even more.

5.   “We fudge the hours we bill you.”

Yeah, we know, you all log your time in, creating detailed and such convoluted Excel sheets that even Lewis and Clark would get lost in them, or use sophisticated and expensive software programs capturing every nanosecond of your time on a client. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that you will bill them precisely for the time calculated on those scientific treatises of time that put Einstein to shame, does it? C’mon, admit it, when you conduct a final review of your time spent on the client, don’t you indulge in a little creative accounting of your own—forging a new system of billing—and fudge the hours a wee little bit? Which reminds me of a joke about accountants fudging their timesheets….

An accountant dies and goes to Heaven.
He reaches the pearly gates and is amazed to see a happy crowd all waving banners and chanting his name.
After a few minutes St. Peter comes running across and says, “I’m sorry I wasn’t here to greet you personally. God is looking forward to meeting such a remarkable man as yourself.”
The accountant is perplexed. “I’ve tried to lead a good life, but I am overwhelmed by your welcome,” he tells St. Peter.
“It’s the least we can do for someone as special as you are. Imagine, living to the age of 123 and still looking so young,” says St. Peter.
The man looks even more dumbfounded and replies, “123 years old? I don’t know what you mean. I’m only 40.”
St. Peter replies, “But that can’t be right – we’ve seen your time sheets!”

6.   “We’re not really experts in anything but Sudoku.”

You may be the Sudoku champion in Idaho. But what sort of verification is there attesting to your expertise in an industry besides your declaration of such? It’s not as if you openly declare your handicap in a certain industry, like golf. True, you take continuing education courses in certain industries, but the examinations are such that you could pass them without even reading the 500+ pages of accompanying materials. Let’s be honest here: do you actually read and study those 500+ pages?  (If you do, you are alone.)  Or do you do what everyone else does: skim the pages in scavenger hunt fashion for the answers, since they are typically worded identically as contained in the multiple choice questions? No scholarly endeavor here.

7.   “You really don’t need to pay us $300 every year to do your tax return.”

She’s a helpless, little old lady, only receiving social security, but do you tell her that she need not pay you her food money for the next month so she does not have to live on cat food? Do you fail to tell this little, helpless old lady who looks exactly like Bubbe that she could go to the local senior center in town or the local IRS office and have her tax return done for free? Not on your life. But you did have a mother and a conscience once, didn’t you?

8.   “We really hate playing golf with you.”

Yes, I know, it’s time out of the office, and you’re out in the sunshine, walking the fairways, drinking, joking, laughing, bonding with your clients, but you really hate chasing that little white ball up and down those fairways, into the woods, cursing and swearing, cheating on your strokes, taking all those preferred lies, regretting never completing those golf lessons to develop that swing to correct that hook and slice, much preferring spectator sports like watching the Yankees sweep four games from the Red Soxs while guzzling a case of beer, but you need the fees to support your expensive life style. So you golf, swear, curse, laugh at their silly jokes, and take those preferred lies.

9.   “You’re a cheap pain in the butt.”

You know that your clients are having the worst of all possible years, and that they should check your bill because, after all, you are gouging them, but nevertheless they are a constant pain in the butt, with all of their needless calls at all hours of the day and night, and the state of their records, never being ready on time and trickling in one statement at a time, and always at the last minute. Yes, they’re obnoxious, cheaters, lousy business people, unwilling or unable to pay their bills, always complaining about your fees and always negotiating your fees every year, if not every month, but their money is green after all, if you can ever manage to collect it.

10.  “Your return is being prepared by some geek in New Delhi.”

For all of your hype about how good you are, and the display of all of your credentials and licenses in your offices, and all of those publications and books arranged so neatly and impressively on the bookshelves in your offices, and all of those repeated and sincere assurances to your clients that you personally will devote considerable attention on their tax returns, as soon as they leave your office, you pick up the phone and call Sabu, your outsourced connection in New Delhi, whom you pay $5 per hour to bang out tax returns.

Of course, this article does not pertain to you personally, but to the formal, universal you in general. Of course, you are that sterling accountant who fully discloses all to your clients, a superb accountant, a true specialist in your advertised fields, honest and upfront with all of your clients, a sincere lover of the game of golf, never taking preferred lies, a real people person…like me. This article, however, was written for Otto Schmidlap, a CPA practicing in Berlin, Connecticut.

Have a tax or an accounting question? Please feel free to submit it under “Comments” at Accounting, QuickBooks, and Taxes by the Barefoot Accountant. For information and assistance on any tax and accounting issue, please visit our website: Accountants CPA Hartford, LLC.

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Are You An Accounting Nerd?

Posted on January 20, 2011 by William Brighenti
Accounting Nerd

William Brighenti's High School Graduation Photo

There are varying degrees of accounting nerdiness.  Some accounting nerds live normal lives, marry and, according to Kinsley, even propagate.  Some never marry since everyone they ever dated lapsed into comas, never to be heard from again.  Others are complete introverts and should never have left the convent or monastery.  (The Father of Accounting, Luca Pacioli, was a monk.  He never left the monastery.  Hence, he was also the Father of Accounting Nerdiness.)

Do you know how much of an accounting nerd you are?  Of course you do.  Or do you?!  Like most nerds, you probably suffer from the mistaken belief that you are not an accounting nerd at all.  However, unless the confidence interval of your belief of not being an accounting nerd possesses an alpha significance value of less than 5%, then how can you be so sure that you are not a nerd after all?

Let’s face facts:  chances are you don’t have a clue about how nerdy you really are.  And it’s totally irrelevant how you perceive yourself; rather, what is relevant is how all of your friends, associates, clients, and family members (especially your spouse) laugh hysterically and derisively about you behind your back, ridiculing you as the nerdiest geek they ever met.  But they won’t ever tell you how much of an accounting nerd you are because that would ruin their enjoyment of ridiculing and laughing about you behind your back at every opportunity they get.

Perhaps it’s time for you to assess objectively your accounting nerdiness.  Below are a series of questions designed to measure just how much of an accounting nerd you are.  Please answer all of these questions truthfully, since if you are truly the nerdiest accountant on the entire planet, no one would care in the least bit anyway.

1. Do you examine your sales receipt before you leave the register at a store, adding it up in your mind to verify its accuracy, even though twenty people are behind you waiting in line and the store is closing?

2. After you have examined your sales receipt while at the register of a store and added up every item on the receipt to ensure its accuracy, do you then tick and vouch each item on the receipt to the actual goods in your carriage?

3. When you go out to lunch or dinner with others, when the check arrives, do you whip out your calculator and tally up each individual’s share to the penny, including tip and tax?

4. When your spouse asks you for money, do you
a. Charge her/him interest
b. Compound the interest daily
c. Require a signed promissory note
d. None of the above

5. Did your tax filing status influence the timing of your wedding date?

6. On your honeymoon, did you select a Caribbean resort offering a CPE course in order to deduct its cost?

7. During tax season, do you
a. Bring your laptop to bed
b. Have sex via remote access
c. Practice celibacy
d. A and b
e. None of the above

8. On your office desk, do you have a picture of Spock from Star Trek?

9. Do you reconcile your personal savings account bank statement every month in QuickBooks, even though the only transaction is an interest posting?

10. Out in the field on audit assignments, when you discover a client error requiring an adjusting entry, do you scream “gotcha”, and dance around the table singing “We are the champions of the world”?

11. Do you eat lunch at your desk, dropping your food in your keyboard, and continue typing with ketchup and grease on your fingers?

If you answered no to all nine questions and selected 4d and 7e, you are not an accounting nerd; however, you probably will never pass the CPA exam and should change careers before you are fired.

If you answered no to all nine questions but selected 4b or 4c and 7c, you are not an accounting nerd but you would be advised never to marry.

If you answered yes to at least five questions, and did not select 4d or 7e, you are bi-nerd and could swing either way.

If you answered yes to all nine questions and selected 4b or 4c and 7c, you are a true accounting nerd destined to be a partner at a public accounting firm as long as you do not enter a religious order in order to avoid taxes on your wages and obtain a non-taxable living allowance.

This article was written by William Brighenti, who, according to his wife, relatives, and six cats, is an accounting nerd.  And what do his friends say?  Obviously because he is an accounting nerd, he has no friends.

Have a tax or an accounting question?  Please feel free to submit it to William Brighenti, Certified Public Accountant, Hartford CPA Accountants.  For information and assistance on any tax and accounting issue, please visit our website, Accountants CPA Hartford, and our blog, Accounting and Taxes Simplified by the Barefoot Accountant.

——————————————————————————–

If and only to the extent that this publication contains contributions from tax professionals who are subject to the rules of professional conduct set forth in Circular 230, as promulgated by the United States Department of the Treasury, the publisher, on behalf of those contributors, hereby states that any U.S. federal tax advice that is contained in such contributions was not intended or written to be used by any taxpayer for the purpose of avoiding penalties that may be imposed on the taxpayer by the Internal Revenue Service, and it cannot be used by any taxpayer for such purpose. The above tax advice was written to support the promotion or marketing of the accounting practice of the publisher and any transaction described herein. The taxpayer recipients of this offering memorandum should seek tax advice based on their particular circumstances from an independent tax advisor.

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Why not a CPA as President?

Posted on January 20, 2011 by William Brighenti

Murray Blum for PresidentWith the economy the most central issue, why not elect a CPA as President? A recent poll showed that 47% of our fellow citizens thought that the economy was the central issue of our country. So we elect lawyers to manage and direct our economy? Does this make any sense? Why not elect someone who can read a budget?

 
I love the scene in the movie, “Dave”, when Dave Kovic, acting as President, calls in his buddy, a nerdy accountant named Murray Blum, played by Charles Grodin, to find $650 million dollars in the budget to keep open shelters for the homeless. Do you recall what Murray says, reviewing the U.S. budget?
 
“I’ll tell you, Dave. I’ve been over this stuff a bunch of times. It just doesn’t add up. Who does these books? I mean, if I ran my business this way, I’d be out of business. “
 
However, in an hour or two over lunch (Blum loves bratwurst; no quiche for him), Blum finds the funds. Let’s face it: accountants are meat-and-potatoes kind of people; some lawyers can’t even spell that word…recall Dan Quayle. Accountants love the meat… they look at the numbers, add them up, and make certain they balance and whether or not one has the funds. Lawyers? Put two lawyers in a room, and you have a never-ending discussion…excuse me, debate. Put 100 lawyers in the Senate, and you have lots of endless discussions, and gridlock.
 
The perennial question is, can lawyers add? Maybe it has something to do with left side/right side of the brain, verbal and quantitative abilities being on opposite sides of our central synapsis unit. Lawyers can sure talk. And they can write better than us accountants. Do you recall those arrogant replies to your legal confirmations as a young public accountant, with their corrections of your spelling and grammar in red ink? And they can write—and write—endless tomes in that Swiftian language called “legalese”. But have you ever noticed their inability to compose correctly any reports dealing with money? Did you ever receive a bill from an attorney? I rest my case, my dear Perry.
 
Personally, I think accountants should govern the entire world. I’m tired of generals with degrees in war becoming dictators, and lawyers talking endlessly and gridlocking, and B-rated actors holding public office and reading scripts. Engineers are not suitable either: remember Hoover? Keep them building dams. If a prerequisite to being President was an accounting degree, our country would not be in debt for $12,297,657,622,986.34 as of 08:41:56 on 01/14/10, and owned by the Bank of China. Always the accountant.
 
In 1964, I recall a speech at the Goldwater convention made by an actor who was to become President. The theme of his speech centered on our reckless government’s fiscal and tax policies, when our national debt was $311 billion dollars. When he took office in 1980, it was $907 billion dollars; when he left office in 1988, it was $2.6 trillion dollars. Never once did this President (excuse me, actor) present a balanced budget to the United States Congress. So much for actors on budgets and leadership. They can read the lines, but do they mean what they say?
 
Rest assured, an accountant means what he or she says. An accountant knows that a budget must balance. If an accountant were President, here is what you could expect:
 
  1. A balanced budget.
  2. No waste or pork (except for bratwurst).
  3. No needless wars: CPAs are geeks; we’re used to getting beaten up. And only “pay as you go” wars, which would end all wars immediately anyway. We’re broke!
  4. And press conferences not covered by the media. Why would CNN, FOX, MSNBC roll cameras and microphones to hear a CPA rattle off numbers for two hours? Rest assured, your NASCAR, football, baseball, or basketball game would never be interrupted for a Presidential press conference again.
 
It’s time for a CPA to come forth, run for office, and save our country. Any volunteers?
 
Have a tax or an accounting question?  Please feel free to submit it to William Brighenti, Certified Public Accountant, Hartford CPA Accountants.  For information and assistance on any tax and accounting issue, please visit our website, Accountants CPA Hartford, and our blog, Accounting and Taxes Simplified.

If and only to the extent that this publication contains contributions from tax professionals who are subject to the rules of professional conduct set forth in Circular 230, as promulgated by the United States Department of the Treasury, the publisher, on behalf of those contributors, hereby states that any U.S. federal tax advice that is contained in such contributions was not intended or written to be used by any taxpayer for the purpose of avoiding penalties that may be imposed on the taxpayer by the Internal Revenue Service, and it cannot be used by any taxpayer for such purpose.  The above tax advice was written to support the promotion or marketing of the accounting practice of the publisher and any transaction described herein.  The taxpayer recipients of this offering memorandum should seek tax advice based on their particular circumstances from an independent tax advisor.
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10 out of 9 accountants can’t count!

Posted on January 20, 2011 by William Brighenti

by William Brighenti, CPA, the Barefoot Accountant

10 out of 9 accountants can't countThere are three kinds of accountants:  those who can count and those who cannot!

But who needs to count and add today anyway?  We have the sum command in Excel and calculators that can fit in a shirt’s pocket.  We don’t need to foot or cross-foot any longer:  QuickBooks never fails to produce a trial balance displaying the equality of debits and credits, except for that one client in Toledo. 

And who needs to know the tax code any longer?  To do taxes, just fill in the blanks of any number of tax software on the market, and anyone can spit out tax returns.  Don’t believe me?  Just walk into any discount tax store and see the employees without a college degree (all that their employers require is a GED) banging out tax returns.  And what about all those tax accountants in India preparing tax returns for CPAs here in the USA:  do you think they have read, studied, and understand the Internal Revenue Code and the Treasury Regulations, all written in a very difficult variant of English?  Have you ever reached New Delhi after experiencing a problem with your internet, cable TV, computer, or cell phone, only to have the customer service representative ask you the very same questions that you already answered initially through the company’s automated answering system and consume 30 minutes of your time, before referring you to level “two” support in California, Texas, Florida, or Massachusetts?!?  Do you really believe that they understand the complexity and nuances of our tax code, written in that Swiftian or Joycean language of legalese?

I have an excuse for not being able to count or add:  I’m old.  The other day while in a bookstore, I turned around and noticed an attractive lady smiling at me.  Her face was familiar, but for the life of me, I couldn’t recall her name.  And then it occurred to me:  it was my wife.  I had learned years ago it was much safer to call her “honey” and not by her first name since if I had suffered a memory lapse, particularly at bedtime, it could prove embarrassing—if not dangerous—calling her by another woman’s name.  (OK, OK, I confess:  I did this once….OK, OK, I did this more than once.)

For those CPAs who are nearing CPA Heaven like me, isn’t it embarrassing when clients call you on the phone and you can’t remember who they are?  You kind of recognize the name or the voice, but that’s about it, not recalling their particular situation and circumstances.  Unfortunately, there are no faces to assist your recall of who in the world they are.  Usually I play along, saying innocuous things such as, “so what have you been up to lately”, waiting for additional clues to emerge, like a Jessica Fletcher.  However, unlike Jessica Fletcher, even after an hour’s time on the phone—by which time Jessica would not only have solved the entire crime but also would have had the bloke placed  in handcuffs and been back in Cabot Cove waiting for the next murder to occur in that deadly New England town (there must have been a thousand murders in that town of a population of only 3,000!)—I sometimes am still at a complete loss as to whom I am speaking.  And if you cannot recall who Jessica Fletcher is, you, too, may be suffering from dementia, alzheimer’s, or both.  But just remember to call her or him “honey”…always.

But I still remember jokes.  Why is it that when you age, you can remember useless information, like jokes, but not critical information, like where did you leave the car keys, or where did you leave your car in the shopping plaza parking lot?  For instance, at this very instant, I just lost my train of thought and forgot where I was going with this blog entry…but I just remembered another joke.  See what I mean?!  So here’s the joke, before I forget it.

An accountant is walking along the beach and he finds an old lamp.  So he picks it up, rubs it and, of course, a genie appears. 

The genie says “I am the most powerful genie that has ever lived.  I can do great and wonderful things and I can grant you your dearest wish.  But only one.”

Unlike most accoutants, this particular accountant is a deeply caring individual.  He pulls out a map of the Mediterranean area and says, “My dearest wish is that you solve the Arab-Israeli conflict in the Middle East.  The genie strokes his beard and looks worried.  “Oh dear, ” he says , staring at the map.  “That’s a tough one.  Those people have been fighting for eons.  No one has been able to come up with a successful solution, not even Hillary Clinton.  I’m not sure if I could do any better. You should probably make another wish.”

The accountant is understanding and says, “All right.  Listen, the IRS has asked me to re-design their 1040 form so that everyone can understand it.  Can you help me with that?”

There’s a long silence and finally the genie says,  “Let’s have another look at that map.”

William Brighenti, Certified Public Accountant, Certified QuickBooks ProAdvisor

Accountants CPA Hartford, LLC

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Accountants: Are They Born or Made?

Posted on January 20, 2011 by William Brighenti

On the website, “Best Colleges Online.Net”, an anonymous author named “admin” posted an article on August 8, 2010 entitled, “10 Ways to Know You Were Born to Be an Accountant”, as if accountants are born and not made.  That article brings to mind that age-old argument of whether you were doomed to be a gloomy bean counter or whether you were made, crafted, chosen, or forced by someone (your mommie?) to be a certified public accountant.  That is the question, as always:  which came first…the egghead CPA or the egg.  I hate these stupid arguments:  I never seem to get them right.

Apparently an accountant did not write that article.  Probably some liberal arts major—or, even more likely, some marketing major—wrote that piece, since it reads like a blurb, if anything.  Or perhaps some comedy writer on the David Letterman show wrote this originially for the “Top 10” feature of the show, before being axed.  In any event, whoever wrote the article knows little about accounting and less about accountants.

To prove my point, I will list here the 10 big clues provided by the phantom author, indicating whether one is destined to be an accountant.  Since the blurb appears on a college review website, its obvious intention is to assist those about to enter college and choose a major of study.  The 10 indicators appear in the article as if they were scientifically derived from empirical research and appropriate for an authentic aptitude test.  Of course, being an accountant, I will include my own reactions to the indicators offered, with the intention of illustrating whether or not the 10 big clues do indeed hit the mark or miss the target entirely. 

  1. “Nothing really bores you.”  Ridiculous!  I’m an accountant, not a vegetable.  Nothing bores me?  I couldn’t count the number of times that I have been lulled into a narcoleptic snooze during  endless drivel of politicians, CEOs, marketers, talk-show hosts, et al.  On the other hand, I bore everyone on earth, including my spouse and kiddies.  I don’t bore any friends because I’m too boring to have any friends.  Scratch this one off the list.
  2. “You’ve always embraced technology.”  This is true.  As a teen/adult/senior I loved Pong, Nintendo, PacMac, and every violent computer game that came on the market.  I was too geeky to have embraced physical sports and members of the opposite sex.  I wished I had embraced the latter before middle age.  I might have had more luck.
  3. “You’ve always loved dealing with numbers.”  No, I just sucked at everything else!  I bought Cliff Notes and Monarch Reviews instead of reading all of those books assigned by my teachers.  I still hate writing book reports and that Miss Reilly in 8th grade English.  (My brothers and father had her for English, and they all hated her, too.  But they’re not accountants.  Go figure.)
  4. “You have an abnormal passion for tax law.”  Although I have an obscene passion for Susan Dey of L.A. Law, I really struggle with that Swiftian language, “legalese”.  Without sophisticated tax software, I wouldn’t know where to begin in preparing a tax return.  I wished my attorney looked like Susan Dey.
  5. “You’ve always sweated the details.”  True, because I couldn’t see the forest from the trees.  I’m anal and myopic…like all accountants.
  6. “You’ve always welcomed the challenge of solving a problem.”  Welcoming the challenge of solving a problem and solving the problem are two different things.  Ask PWC about its inability to catch all of those accounting improprieties going on at AIG, some of which may have extended as far back as twenty years.  I don’t welcome the challenge of solving any problem.  I just welcome getting paid, preferably up front, and without doing anything at all, quite frankly.
  7. “You’ve always been conservative with your time.”  This is a positive trait?!  Being stingy with one’s time, and rushing through one’s work without giving it much thought at all?!  Perhaps if certain auditors (who shall remain nameless) had spent a wee little more time on certain audit engagements, they wouldn’t be in such big trouble right now.  And although debits and credits is not rocket science, and is not too taxing on our synapses, I’m Italian and I believe that everything—especially work—need not be rushed, but savored, enjoyed, and appreciated to the fullest extent possible.  Slow down and get paid by the hour, I always say.
  8. “You’ve always been a people person.”  Right!  And I’m Mother Theresa of Calcutta.  Show me an accountant and I’ll show you a Boris Karloff double.  People persons!  LOL!  Is Barbra Streisand the ghost writer of this article?
  9. “You’ve always had a conservative appearance.”  Penguins wear a tux everyday.  So what’s the point here?!  Virtually all corporate and business people have conservative appearances.  This is not a distinguishing trait of us accountants from other business workers and professionals.  It’s just that all of these other business and professional people look much more attractive in their conservative attire than we do.  Let’s admit the truth:  we ain’t attractive;  i.e., look at my picture.  Enough said.
  10. “Your integrity has always been of the utmost importance to you.”  And that explains the bunch of accounting scandals widely reported in the media over the past thirty years involving misleading “creative” accounting, financial analysis, bribery, fraud, and including giants like Nugan Hand Bank, Phar-Mor, WorldCom, AIG, Enron…and let us not forget, Arthur Andersen?!  Sure, a large publicly held client pays us on average a $5 million audit fee every year (plus millions in other services), and we are going to issue this company an adverse opinion on its financial statements and jeopardize losing millions every year because of our integrity?!  Who wrote this article?  Mary Poppins?

Now you know why the article was anonymously credited to “admin”.  Admin should do stand up for a living.

Have a tax or an accounting question?  Please feel free to submit it under “Comments” at Accounting, QuickBooks, and Taxes by the Barefoot Accountant.  For information and assistance on any tax and accounting issue, please visit our website:  Accountants CPA Hartford, LLC.

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Types of Clients Served by Public Accounting Firms

Posted on January 20, 2011 by William Brighenti

Accounting Firm's ClientsFor years we’ve been categorizing different kinds of accountants by industry and on the basis of the groups we serve.  We have accountants for contractors, not-for-profits, governmental entities, manufacturers, professional service businesses, restaurants, farmers, financial institutions, etc.  Recently mulling over our firm’s services and groups of clients we serve in order to better target market our niches and increase our clientele, we developed a more meaningfully descriptive set of categories to classify clients, since we found the above-mentioned industry and functional classifications somewhat irrelevant, if not obsolete.  Quite frankly, we see the emergence of a new variety of clients that refuse to be typecast into the old traditional categories.

Here is how we classify our clients, and some suggestions on how they can best be served by your staff.

Clients who are slobs.

an accounting client slobThis has been and is likely to continue to be the largest group of clients that you will be servicing into the far distant future, considering the financial mess in which our country presently finds itself.  In fact, it is more than likely that many of your clients were probably responsible for contributing to this awful state of affairs because of their reckless, excess borrowing, skimping on accounting services, hiring incompetent bookkeepers, moving operations overseas, and making large political donations to candidates who would do anything for a buck.

However, you have no need to fear about addressing the needs of these slobs.  Since accountants are typically anal and obsessive-compulsive by temperament, you have an unlimited number of available accountants who are more than willing to devote countless hours tidying up these clients’ financial records that are a complete wreck.  Over the recent years we have witnessed the emergence of a new kind of accountant, known in the trade as “fuzzy wuzzy”, whose specialty is cleaning up complete messes in QuickBooks files.
 
Clients who are tax cheats. 

The Tax CheatHere is an oldie but goodie that our profession has failed to publicize openly in the trade for centuries, ever since Caesar had attempted to collect what was to be rendered unto him 2,000 years ago.  Although most clients would be eligible for classification here, at our firm we typically limit this caption to those who wish to implicate us in their felonies.  Unfortunately, that includes most of our clients.  Because of the potential liability and the unattractive prospect of sharing a 6 by 8 cell with someone who may offer you chocolates before bedtime, it would be prudent to assign these clients to staff who were former IRS agents, FBI agents, police officers, or former gang members:  that is, those who could spot a crime on a dime.
 
If such individuals are not in your present employ, then it would be best to allow the partners to continue to service these clients, because, let’s face it, how do you think they attained their lofty station at your public accounting firm in the first place?

Besides significant increases in liability and errors and omissions insurance, it might be wise to invest in the purchase of a lie detector test to be administered to each client on an annual basis.

Clients who are drunks. 

The Drunk ClientFor those CPA firms with the foresight of obtaining a liquor license for their premises, here’s an opportunity to fleece these clients without them ever having a clue.  They are easy to spot because whenever they exhale, you suddenly feel light-headed and nauseous.

Staff accountants who were former bartenders or boast of their ability to imbibe a case of beer in one sitting and still pass a sobriety test are ideal employees to service these clients.  Of course, if such are not available at your firm, you can always find a partner at your firm to serve these clients since in every office there is at least one who stashes a bottle or two in his or her bottom desk drawer or credenza.

Clients who do not have both feet on the ground. 

Science Fiction Accounting ClientThis is a relatatively new breed of client.  Although there were certain to have been lots of nut cases as clients in the distant past, these clients are definitely a subset, appearing normal to most people except for the occasional glazing of their eyes and their peculiar questions and statements while reviewing their tax returns and financials, such as:

Are travel expenses to K-Pax deductible?
Can the IRS come after me in my next life?
Jedis do not have social security numbers.

We have found that our accountants who are science fiction fans relate rather well with them.  These accountants are easy to spot, since they typically have Spock and Darth Vader photos on their desk, walls, and screen savers.  They often boast of using telepathy to communicate, so here’s an opportunity to save on long distance calls, too.  Although these clients are relatively harmless and amusing at times, it is advisable to let them meet privately with your sci-fi accountants in the conference room, allowing them to work and “communicate” in a world truly of their own making.

Clients with lots of moolah. 

Wealthy accounting clientAlthough they are becoming more and more a rarity these days, this clientele is typically reserved for the partners.  As you have learned by now, like attracts like.  Loaded clients and partners seem well suited, discussing taxes and financials in their $1,000 suits; bragging about their trips to Japan, Egypt, the islands, and exotic places that you will never see; trading photos of their brand new BMWs 750 Li; arranging spouse swapping parties; while complaining and whining about all of the taxes, employee benefits and slave wages that they are shelling out, severely hampering their life styles.

Clients who are welchers. 

Debt collector for accountantsOK, I’m Italian, and I’m the first to admit that we are far from being the Master Race in terms of I.Q.  Perhaps Providence allotted us too many genes below the waist.  But all that polenta, risotta, and pasta has beefed up a number of us wallyos to provide us with enough muscle to collect overdue accounts. 

In addition, despite a rigorous Catholic upbringing, we have been known to commit more than a few mortal sins for a buck.  After all, there is always confession and a plenary indulgence.  So although we have been told that we do indeed have a conscience, we often and quite conveniently have been unable to recall where we left it last.

Especially in today’s economy with so many businesses feeling strapped for cash, it is advisable to always have a Guido in your employ in the event that you should require some arm twisting or leg breaking to collect on those overdue bills.  And if you should find Guido subsequently incarcerated for being a tad too diligent in his collections—accidents have been known to happen when suspending someone upside down by their heels outside an open window 20 stories up, with rarely a creditable reason having ever been offered to a jury for doing such—with this dreadful economy, another Guido should be easy to find.

Clients who are sex fiends.

sexy accountantThey are easy to spot:  a cursory scan of their entertainment expenses will reveal payees suggestive of expense categories difficult to justify to any internal revenue agent’s scrutiny.  For example, vendors with names as “The Body Shop” and “Huff, Puff & Blow” should arouse suspicion in the most obtuse accountant (and believe me, there are many).

Not surprisingly, most contractors fall in this category.  Since construction is a large segment of the accounting market, it is advisable to have in your employ attractive female accountants, whether or not they can add, type, or even think.  Quite frankly, while servicing contractors and others of their like, all they need to do is maintain eye contact, smile a lot, nod like a bubblehead, and always say “yes” to whatever is asked.  Stiletto heels, mini skirts, and revealing décolletages have been known to keep these contractor clients coming back for more and more services at many an accounting firm.  Avoid hiring anyone too kinky:  after all, you do have a professional reputation to protect. 

We hope that this new classification scheme works well for your accounting firm as it has for us.  If you can think of categories we overlooked, please let us know.

Have a tax, QuickBooks, or accounting question?  Please visit us at the Barefoot Accountant and post it under “Comments”.  Or visit our website:  Accountants CPA Hartford, LLC.

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Are You a CPA with an OCD? I’m a CPA with a CDO!

Posted on January 20, 2011 by William Brighenti

Obsessive-compulsive CPAsAre you a CPA with an OCD?  I have CDO.  It’s like OCD, but all the letters are in order like they should be.

Do you even know what OCD stands for?  There are lots of OCDs running around.  They look perfectly normal from the outside.  But they drive everyone—including themselves—crazy.  And our profession certainly appears to attract more than its fair share of these nut cases.  In fact, a psychiatrist could have a field day finding an endless supply of patients in any public accounting office.  Don’t believe me?  Just look around.  (Don’t forget to look in the mirror, too.)

Perhaps it’s the inevitable consequence of restricting human beings to a 3’ by 4’ cubicle, a desk, and a computer monitor for 10 hours a day, 6 days a week, 300 days a year.  Or perhaps there’s something deeper involved here.  Perhaps certain personality traits, innate at birth, doom certain individuals to pursue such a completely nutty, inhuman, unnatural lifestyle of sitting passively in a caged cubicle staring blankly at a video screen of resolution 1024 by 768 pixels all day everyday of the year for up to half a century.  It’s the old causality dilemma of which came first, the nuttiness or the CPA?  Frankly, it does not matter since it doesn’t change the fact that most of us are,…well,…quite frankly,…abnormal.

If you are a CPA, then you must have noticed by now—or perhaps a significant other has brought it to your attention at least 1,001 times, if not more—that you are “peculiar” or “eccentric” (the polite English terms for the American phrase, “being completely off one’s rocker”).  It is possible that your “condition” involves you doing things primarily for the sake of doing them, without any real purpose, as if you were a high priest or priestess performing some sort of mumble-jumble ritualistic rite.  Although you may think that you have very plausible excuses for doing these things, they are only plausible to you since no one else finds them credible at all.

For instance, perhaps you wash your hands every fifteen minutes at the office, justifying such behavior as necessary because your keyboard is full of germs and you do not want to catch a cold.

Or you run to the restroom on the hour every hour you are in the office to brush your teeth, fearing that the artificial lightener in your coffee will rot your teeth.

Or you clutter your desk with everything imaginable under the sun since you began working at this public accounting office, unable to throw anything out, afraid, for instance, that you might need that one worksheet you prepared fifteen years ago for a former client, in the event that that very same client may someday return again as a client and that one particular ripped and coffee-spotted worksheet may prove invaluable after all.

Or you insist on arranging your pencils, rulers, erasers, paper clips, loose staples, elastic bands, thumb tacks, index cards, stickies, labels, tape, etc., in the same exact manner that you have placed them for the past fifteen or twenty years, convinced that unless you do so, you will be unable to find anything. 

Or every five minutes you bellow out a ghastly “ahem” sound, startling everyone within earshot and aggravating the hell out of them, fearing that unless you repeatedly clear your bronchial tubes that you will ultimately suffocate from your self-diagnosed and supposed sinus condition.

Or every five minutes you make a mad dash to the bathroom, convinced that you have a chronic bladder infection, a yeast infection, an enlarged prostate, IBS, lactose intolerance, c difficile, or all of the above conditions.

Whatever erratic behavior you indulge in ritualistically is your own business, and we do not wish to pry (unless, of course, it’s sexual in nature…then by all means, pray tell with all of the filthy, disgusting, sordid and evil details).  We realize that denial typically accompanies a psychiatric disorder, and that any repeated and fervent denial on your part of indulging in such ritualistic behavior merely adds further suspicion that you are, indeed, a certifiable nut case.  The truth is that, without even knowing it, you may be suffering from OCD:  an obsessive-compulsive disorder.  Or, in more simple, everyday, layman terms—language friends or spouses have previously used to characterize you and your behavior—you are “anal”.  And unless you determine how severe it is right now at this very minute without any further delay, you may end up losing not only your job as a CPA—and your trophy wife, because she probably only married you for your W-2 anyway—but also any remaining vestige of sanity, assuming it is not too late, which, in all likelihood, it probably is already.

So if you wish to know how nuts you really are in order to prevent the man with a butterfly net from dragging you off to Happy Dale, answer the following questions right now before it is too late.

How frequently do you park in the same spot in the parking lot outside the office?

  1. Hardly at all.  You select a different space every day because you crave variety.
  2. Usually if it is available.
  3. You come to work early to ensure that it is available.
  4. Always, even if it requires honking your horn incessantly and driving around the lot for hours until it becomes available.

 How often do you wash your hands at work?

  1. Never.
  2. Only when they are full of grease, butter, and layers of food, and are attracting flies.
  3. So frequently that your boss has already spoken to a plumber about installing a sink at your desk.

If your boss had a candy jar full of M & M’s and offered you some, would you:

  1. Grab a handful, and then another, and another, making a complete pig of yourself.
  2. Take only one or two and say “thank you”.
  3. First smell each piece, then blow it thoroughly on all sides, and microscopically inspect its entire surface area before ingesting.
  4. Only take one but only if you had sterilized the candy dish before personally opening the bag of M & M’s, and only if you were the first individual to place your hand in the dish for the candies.  Otherwise, refuse to take any, offering a lame excuse that you are trying to lose weight or are suffering from diabetes and fear lapsing into an irreversible coma.

If a peer or subordinate was having difficulty with his or her computer and needed your assistance, would you

  1. Sit down at his or her computer and attempt to resolve the problem.
  2. Ask him or her to wait, hoping someone else will assist him or her after a few hours.
  3. Assist him or her only after putting on a surgical mask and latex gloves hermetically sealed, and after emptying a container of disinfectant on his or her keyboard.
  4. Feign sudden, complete deafness and pretend you don’t hear her or him.

 If a client had a hair on his or her suit, would you

  1. Ignore it.
  2. Suggest the need for a valet.
  3. Stare at it until he or she removed it.
  4. Pick it off yourself or attempt to blow it off, without suggesting anything sexual.
  5. Scream hysterically, bolt for your car, drive off, and immediately call the police.

When you commit an error, do you

  1. Laugh and say, “No one is perfect….”
  2. Swear and curse.
  3. Kick the computer, your desk, and anyone nearby, and then hobble out of the office in excruciating pain.
  4. Remove your tanto from the bottom drawer on the right hand side of your desk and announce to all samurais present that you are about to perform the sacred ritual of seppuku.

When you are offered constructive criticism, do you

  1. Nod your head, and thank the individual in appreciation.
  2. Make excuses, blaming your wife, children, or mother-in-law.
  3. Debate the observation for endless hours, if not days, until a retraction and an apology is made.
  4. Call the offeror a moron, kick him or her in the groin, and offer back some constructive criticism of your own:  namely, that he or she should go commit an unnatural act (or words to that effect).

If you accidentally hit your hand against a door knob or file cabinet while walking down the office corridor, do you

  1. Rub it and forget about it.
  2. Ice it down for thirty minutes.
  3. Test the severity of the injury by trying countless exercises on your computer keyboard, until you do, in fact, strain or injure a tendon or ligament in your hand.
  4. Go to the emergency room, have x-rays taken, wear a brace or a cast, take a leave of absence for four to six weeks, hire an ambulance chasing attorney, submit a workers compensation claim, and sue your employer for millions. 

If you discover that the height of your chair needs adjustment, do you

  1. Tolerate it until you gain or lose a few pounds on your derriere.
  2. Adjust it until it feels comfortable.
  3. Use a tape measure to adjust it precisely to the level prescribed by Architectural Graphic Standards.
  4. Play around with it, going up and down like a roller coaster, refusing to quit even though everyone nearby has been begging you for the past few hours to do so and you are about to vomit because of motion sickness. 

How often do you suffer from panic attacks?

  1. Never.
  2. Only when you go to bed at night with your spouse.
  3. Whenever you see your boss. 
  4. Whenever you interact with a homo sapien.

The measure of the severity of an obsessive-compulsive disorder can be found by the following algorithm:

OCDI = f(xi)dx

Which can be approximated by the following equation:

OCD~I = ? xi

where OCDI represents “obsessive-compulsive disorder index”,

and where xi  is the value of the number before the individual answer selected from the preceding test.

Summing up all of these numbers gives you the calculated value of the severity of your obsessive-compulsive disorder.  The higher the index, the sicker you are.

If you scored from 15 or under, you are perfectly normal and do not suffer from OCD.

If you scored between 16 and 27, you do suffer from OCD, the condition being all the more noticeable and counter-productive the higher its value.

If you scored between 28 and 40, you have a severe OCD condition.  If it is close to 39, it’s a wonder that you are not serving time or practicing public accounting at Happy Dale.

This article is provided for informational purposes and is not intended to be construed as legal, accounting, or other professional advice.  For further information, please consult appropriate professional advice from your attorney and certified public accountant.  

Have a tax or an accounting question?  Please feel free to submit it under “Comments” at Accounting, QuickBooks, and Taxes by the Barefoot Accountant.  For information and assistance on any tax and accounting issue, please visit our website:  Accountants CPA Hartford, LLC. 

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