Home » My future as an non-accountant

Comments

My future as an non-accountant — 6 Comments

  1. Neo,

    I used to do my own taxes long-hand also. I find that the tax prep software now available is really worth the cost. If you haven’t considered it, you may find that it is a real contribution to one’s sanity. It also helps to find legal deductions and credits that are often overlooked in the arcane world of income taxes.

    One small note: The Ides is the middle of the month and occurs on the 15th only in March, May, July and October of the old Roman Calendar (the Ides of April is actually the 13th, although with 30 days in Gregorian April, I guess one could argue that the Ides of April should be the 15th). Going back to my grad student days, there was a little verse I tried to remember and couldn’t find on the web. I believe it started thus: “On March, July, October, May, the Ides falls on the 15th day. . . .” For more detailed information see the following link

    http://www.infoplease.com/spot/ides1.html

  2. I used to own a seasonal tax-prep business, with most of my work coming from a contract I had with a CPA who had a big tax practice. Sometimes I’d do it all myself, or other years I’d subcontract out some work to a couple of other trained tax preparers I knew to help out, depending on how busy it looked like my CPA would be. My little firm did most of the scut work of inputting the data into his specialized software (think Turbo Tax or Tax Cut, but also with far more options for businesses, partnerships, and trusts, and also with a caseload management feature), while the CPA or one of his partners checked our numbers and signed off on the return. Trained as an accountant myself, I never minded the detailed, allegedly mind-numbing tasks of plugging in numbers and other data. Sometimes, you just get in “the zone” and lose track of time while inputting the data. But creative work it wasn’t. Get too “creative” regarding the tax code, and people go to jail, often starting with the tax preparer.

    We must have been doing something right–my business returned a profit every year I ran it, and none of our returns was ever audited by the IRS or state taxation department. But I shut it down several years ago when I moved overseas. Now, with no property or business interests in the States to worry about, I fill out 1040EZ every year. I use Tax Cut (from H&R Block’s website) and it takes me about 45 minutes to complete. EZ indeed.

  3. I am a CPA working in industry, having left public accounting years ago. I hated taxes in public accounting, and despise doing my own and various family members’ returns each year.

    Some of my CPA colleagues are very much attracted to work in taxation, it takes a certain personality. Higher level tax planning and accountancy involves much research, and has more similarity to legal scut work than it does to auditing, financial reporting, or dealing with real, live business work. It is constrained by rules that are every bit as arbitrary as they are arcane.

    I started using TurboTax when Congress made capital gains taxation too complex to even handle a simple mutual fund annual statement without automation.

    We desperately need tax reform and simplification, but lawyers and professional tax preparers have a stake in the current system. I attend conferences where highly paid professionals specialize in just one tiny niche of income taxation, or estate taxes. They don’t want a more efficient system, and the Congress members have their peculiar notions of what is fair…

  4. I do my own personal taxes and those of my family. I also take care of payroll and quarterly taxes for my wife’s business. An engineer by training, I do find some comfort in the ordliness of numbers. By keeping good records though the year and somehow transforming those records into a defensible tax return, I can bring some small amount of order to an otherwise messy world.

    I think engineers and accountants are really cut from the same cloth. Both professions require great attention to detail. Both require precision. But engineering is easier! The laws of physics do not change with every new political administration!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

HTML tags allowed in your comment: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>