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Accounting News Roundup: Ye Olde CPA; Lotto Winnings and Taxes | 06.07.17

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Ed. note: ANR will be off tomorrow and Friday, returning on Monday.

Ye olde CPA

Here’s a Wall Street Journal article about how “old-timey jobs are hot again.” Vocations like butchers, barbers, and bartenders have become popular thanks to “the ephemerality of the digital age,” according to sociologist Richard Ocejo. Other jobs he mentions include brewer, bookbinder, furniture maker, and fishmonger:

Distinct from many of today’s most vaunted jobs in fields like information technology and financial services, these trades “are based in using your hands, with actual tools and materials, to provide a tangible concrete product,” he says.

To attract young people with college degrees and other options in the labor market, jobs usually have an element of performance to them, Mr. Ocejo says. In most of the careers he studied for “Masters of Craft,” workers interact closely with customers, often in a public setting where their skill and knowledge can be admired.

Accounting, an old-timey job in its own right, won’t be part of this renaissance, I’m sorry to say. Pursuing a nostalgic career will only work if the trade itself has largely remained unchanged. Butchering a pig hasn’t changed too much over the last 100 years, so if you have a sharp cleaver and a few knives, grow a bushy mustache (or wear a fake one, ladies) and get to work. You’ll have customers queued out the door in no time.

Accounting, on the other hand, has become increasingly complex over the past 100 years. So even though I have a working typewriter and an adding machine, I won’t be hanging a hand-carved shingle for a throwback CPA firm anytime soon. I think the only clients I could attract with that kind of business would be old CPA firm partners.

Lotto winnings and taxes

The Powerball jackpot is getting up there again, $375 million, for tonight’s drawing. That’s high enough that you should expect a deluge of media reports about the amount of taxes the winner will pay, especially if no one claims tonight’s prize. “If you win Wednesday night’s Powerball, the tax bill will leave you in tears,” a CNBC headline says.

Except, no, not it won’t, because you will be a millionaire many, many, many times over. And when you are a millionaire many times over, that means you pay millions in taxes, too. It’s just how things work. If you wish to cry because you can’t believe your dumb luck and then start thinking about how you will piss most of the money away, that is fine. But, come on, don’t cry about the taxes.

Has Donald Trump released his tax returns?

Nope! But NBC reported a few days ago that he filed an extension for his 2016 filings, so somewhere, someone connected to Trump is getting something accomplished. Still, working for a guy like this has to be awful. I’ll set the over/under of cabinet members resigning by October 15th at 3.5.

Elsewhere in tax-related Trump stuff: How Donald Trump Shifted Kids-Cancer Charity Money Into His Business

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Previously, on Going Concern…

I noticed that Peter Olinto was buying people coffee, so I hope some of you were able to take advantage. In Open Items, a Big 4 auditor who’s up for promotion wants to know where to move next.

In other news:

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