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Accounting News Roundup: Gold Medalist Doesn’t Do Taxes, Printer Bashing, Accountant Authority | 08.26.16

Life after Big 4 (for gold medal triathletes)

There's been a lot of nice articles written about Gwen Jorgensen over the past few days and this one from Fox Business is no exception. Her training routine sounds brutal — "Five days a week, we’re doing a swim, a bike, a run as well as gym work and physiotherapy. And, the other two days a week will be smaller days where I will do only two workouts instead of three" — and her husband, Patrick Lemieux, quit his job to support her this whole time. I want them to be my friends.

Anyway, all of this training and competing and being generally wonderful means that Gwen doesn't have a lot free time for other stuff, including old pursuits: 

“I really don’t even want to admit this but I don’t even do my own taxes anymore.”

Admit it, Gwen! You know it feels good.

Printers

I watched Office Space, memorized the entire thing, quoted it constantly to the annoyance of everyone around me and then moved on before most people even heard of the film. This isn't a hipster moment in so much as it is a way of explaining that any violent tendencies I would've had towards a printer ceased long ago. In fact, I don't recall ever feeling so enraged at a copy machine or printer that I wanted to drag it to field and beat it within an inch of its mechanical life — I just fixed them — but apparently I'm in the minority on that one:

Inspired by the 1999 movie “Office Space,” workers are bonding over the public destruction of the inky bane of their existence. The film, written and directed by Mike Judge, was a box-office flop when it hit theaters, grossing just $10.8 million in the U.S., according to Box Office Mojo. It evolved into a cult classic thanks, in part, to a slow-motion scene in which three engineers use a baseball bat to beat the living daylights out of their office’s printer-facsimile. The action is set to the dulcet tones of “Still,” by gangsta-rap group Geto Boys.

The message behind “Office Space,” which eviscerates soulless American corporate culture, is being newly embraced as companies plan employee retreats around printer bashing.

“Even though the manufacturers have worked hard to improve these machines and make them easier to use, that’s made them even more complex. That can create even more frustration, and people feel helpless. That’s when the bats come out,” says a guy. And I'm left wondering what terrible things are going on in people's lives that so many solve office equipment problems with baseball bats and crowbars.

There is a solution to all this man-on-machine violence — A PAPERLESS OFFICE. I realize that idea is controversial for some accounting firms, but please don't take your frustrations out on the nearest HP or Xerox machine.

Has Donald Trump released his tax returns?

Nope! Trump campaign manager Kellyanne Conway says she defers to the authority of lawyers and accountants involved and now I'm officially skeptical because no one is giving accountants authority for anything.

IRS phone scams

At what point do we reach critical mass of media coverage of IRS phone scams? Syndicated columnist Michelle Singletary wrote about them just yesterday and suggested starting #StopIRSImpersonators, which is fine but a bit of a mouthful. I think all we're missing is an episode of True Life: I fell for an IRS phone scam

Previously, on Going Concern…

I speculated about PwC Chairman Tim Ryan being a scifi nerd. And in Open Items, someone asked for perspective on Big 4-PCAOB-Big 4 boomerangs.

In other news:

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