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Kvetching About the Complexity of the Income Tax Is Nearly a Century-old Tradition

Joseph Thorndike writes over at Tax.com that bitching about the burdensome nature of income tax is as old-fashioned as plutocrats wearing top hats.

In 1915, Chicago lawyer Charles H. Hamill of Rosenthal & Hamill made headlines with some vigorous complaints about the new income tax, then less than two years old. The law, he said, was “the worst piece of legislative draftsmanship I have ever seen placed upon a statute book anywhere.” Indeed, it was very nearly incomprehensible:

“It is so complicated that it is utterly impossible to understand its meaning save by consulting a palmist.”

So as you can see, things haven’t really changed. To this day, whether you’re paying a lawyer, CPA or palm reader for your time, you walk out more confused than when you walked in and you definitely don’t feel like you got your money’s worth.

Think Taxes are Too Complicated? They Thought So in 1915, Too [Tax.com]

Desperately Seeking a CPA Exam Study Buddy?

Contributor note: with busy season winding down and such awful CPA exam performance the first quarter of this year, we suspect many of you are thrilled to cuddle up with Peter Olinto and dust the cobwebs off your CPA review books. That being the case, though you might still be mad at us from last quarter, we invite you to send in your CPA exam questions so we can do our best to answer in a way that offends the fewest candidates possible.

Being an accountant already isolates you from a large number of non-accountant people, most of whom automatically assume you do taxes for a living and will never understand why it’s funny to claim Ex-lax as “moving expenses.” Taking on the CPA exam naturally isolates you further; from your significant other, who doesn’t get why you never seem to have time for them anymore, from your friends who are still trying to get you to do their taxes and from your higher-ups who seem determined to tell you for the 40th time how much harder the CPA exam was back in their day.


Seeking a CPA exam study buddy doesn’t need to feel like having to find a partner in middle school gym class and it doesn’t matter where you are, you can find one. Here are a few tips:

• Try CPAnet – You can find an entire section of the forum dedicated to study groups, ranging from Phoenix to Seattle to Dubai. Don’t see your city listed? Register for the forum and post your own.

• Get on Twitter – Try the #twudygroup hashtag on Twitter to chat with other CPA exam candidates, bitch about how your review courses have let you down and talk about how messed up it is when asshole bloggers call you out on their websites. Speaking of, we’d like to send a very personal congratulations to former #twudygroup member @CStrunk for passing the CPA exam, proof that alcohol and computer cleaning in lieu of studying can help, if you’re willing to put in the work when you’re sober. Congratulations, Chris, we knew you had it in you otherwise we’d have never called you out in the first place.

• Ask around your office – Unless you are in a two-man office in which one of you is the accountant and the other one the boss, someone in your office is also studying for the CPA exam. You can do a quick cube check to determine who might be studying but if you’re too shy to ask, just look for the sleep-deprived look in their eye, MCQ on their computer screen during lunch or the “kill me now” sign taped on their wall the day scores come out. Just make sure to pick someone you actually like, sharing the next year and a half with someone you can’t stand can only lead to conflict and/or increased diversity training later down the road.

You Can Thank Abraham Lincoln For Not Having to File Your Taxes Today

As everyone knows, today is usually tax day but thanks to Emancipation Day – a recognized public holiday in the District of Columbia, home of the IRS, since 2005 – we get an extra weekend to put off plugging our earnings into our 1040s.

The official holiday is April 16th but since Emancipation Day falls on a Saturday this year, the District gets Friday off. Buses run as usual but those heading to Tax Day events around DC (Federal Reserve Board protest, anyone?) can rest easy knowing the DC Parking Gestapo will not be out circling the streets for blood, er, expired meters.


Fact: slavery was legal in the U.S. from 1619 until 1865. By 1860, there were about four million slaves in the United States. On April 16, 1862, Abraham Lincoln signed the Compensated Emancipation Act, which freed more than 3,000 slaves in the District of Columbia. Slavery did not officially end in the United States until the end of the Civil War in 1865 when the 13th Amendment was ratified by 30 of the then 36 states. Bet you didn’t know that Mississippi only ratified the 13th amendment in 1995!

This holiday is especially near and dear to my locale, which boasts itself as the wealthiest majority African American county in the entire country. Though don’t believe everything you read in Ebony, PG is far from the luxurious country club the magazine painted it as in this 2006 article.

April 15th falls on a Sunday next year so you’ll also get an extra couple days in 2012 but Honest Abe doesn’t get credit for that, maybe Copernicus or whoever came up with the 365 + 1 every four years calendar year.

Happy Emancipation Day!

Accounting News Roundup: Ernst & Young Faces Resurrected Lawsuit; Taxpayer Advocate Wants Overhaul of Code; PwC Supports GLBT Youth | 04.15.11

Ernst & Young must face class action over Broadcom’s option backdating [LAT]
A lower-court judge had dismissed the case against Ernst & Young after concluding the plaintiffs hadn’t shown that the auditors knew that the value of Broadcom’s stock was probably inflated by the company’s manipulation of its financial statements. Thursday’s ruling by the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco reversed that dismissal and scolded Ernst & Young for not acting to stop the $2.2-billion backdating scheme.

Obama $1 Trillion Tax Proposal Slams Into Republican Wall [Bloomberg]
President Barack Obama’s call for raising taxes by focusing on spending in the tax code was immediately rejected by top Republicans, signaling that any effort to increase the government’s take from the economy would be difficult to move through Congress.

IRS Watchdog Seeks Overhaul Of Corporate, Individual Tax Code [Dow Jones]
National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson Wednesday told lawmakers the U.S. tax code is “a mess,” and in dire need of simplification, but any overhaul should rework rules for corporate and individual taxes at the same time. “I believe that fundamental tax reform must be made a priority,” Olson said in her written testimony to the House Small Business Committee. “However, in order to be effective and far-reaching, such fundamental tax reform should include both corporate tax reform and individual tax reform.”

BofA Q1 profit lower than expected; names new CFO [Reuters]
Bank of America Corp (BAC.N) posted an unexpectedly sharp decline in first-quarter profit, plagued by losses in the mortgage business, and the bank named a new chief financial officer.

PwC Says “It Gets Better” in Support of GLBT youth [PwC]
As far as work-life balance…well, that’s another question entirely.

Chinese Man Arrested in LA For Creating a Fake Army [JDA]
Wait, that’s a crime?

Zale says SEC not to recommend action against co [Reuters]
Zale Corp said the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission does not intend to recommend action against the company following a probe into the accounting errors that prompted the jewelry retailer to restate results. Zale had restated results for 2008 and some quarters in 2009 due to accounting errors related to prepaid advertising and loss carryforwards. Loss carryforwards are used to cut tax liability by offsetting losses in a certain year against future profits. These carryforwards can be used in one of the seven years following a loss.

IRS Chief Lays Out Vision For Agency’s Future [NPR]
The Commish wants to fosters a more pleasant tax compliance experience.

President Obama Puts 1099 Reporting Requirement Down for the Dirt Nap

Today, I was pleased to take another step to relieve unnecessary burdens on small businesses by signing H.R. 4 into law. Small business owners are the engine of our economy and because Democrats and Republicans worked together, we can ensure they spend their time and resources creating jobs and growing their business, not filling out more paperwork. I look forward to continuing to work with Congress to improve the tax credit policy in this legislation and I am eager to work with anyone with ideas about how we can make health care better or more affordable. [WH]

CFOs: We’ll Start Hiring Just as Soon as We Hit Our Unreachable Revenue Goals

Sound good to everyone?

Chief financial officers at large North American companies polled by Deloitte LLP said it would take a 20% surge in revenue before they felt comfortable adding to their payrolls.

The quarterly survey released Thursday found that nearly half of respondents would seriously consider adding employees if revenues rose 20%, but few would be moved by a 5% increase. A 10% bump in revenue would only be a major hiring consideration for 11% of CFOs.

Worse yet, perhaps, actual growth isn’t expected to reach such heights: respondents estimate top line growth at North American companies will be just 8.2% this year. (This is, however, a rosier picture than the fourth quarter when respondents forecast 6.5% for the coming year.)

And don’t bother trying to bait them with tax reform, revisions to the healthcare reform bill or payroll tax incentives because they’re all non-starters.

CFOs: Revenue Surge Needed to Boost Hiring [WSJ]

IASB Chairman: We Don’t Issue Low-Quality Accounting Standards

Rule makers concluded this week that “we all could benefit from a few more months to develop these standards, some of which really go to the core issues of many companies,” said Leslie Seidman, chairman of FASB, in a podcast issued Thursday. Sir David Tweedie, chairman of the IASB, said rule makers still intend to finish their convergence work by year’s end. The delay, he said in the podcast, will “enable us to check whether our conclusions will last the test of time. … We would never release a standard before it is ready and ultimately it must be a high-quality standard or you just can’t issue it.” [WSJ]

Osbournes Pay Off Tax Lien, May Be on the Hunt for a New Accountant

It sounds like the Osbournes need to find themselves a new Mort Mort Feingold.

“I […] contacted my accountant who said they knew nothing about any lien. The lien has been paid. I do intend to find out how this lien happened without the knowledge of myself or my accountants. I hope none of this reflects negatively on mine and Ozzy’s moral character.” […] “Just because you’re paying someone doesn’t mean they’re doing the job correctly,” she wrote on Friday. Three days later she added, “You can’t rely on anyone but yourself. You have to be on top of your own business affairs. My fault … lesson learned.”

Ozzy Osbourne pays off U.S. tax debts [Reuters]

Did a PwC Auditor Work Herself to Death?

Pan Jie was a 25 year-old auditor in PwC’s Shanghai office, starting her career with the firm last October. She died of acute cerebral meningitis on April 10th, having “ignored the illness until a fever surged,” after catching the flu on March 31st. Reports have stated that Jie told a friend that “she had been working up to 18 hours a day and about 120 hours a week,” prior to her death.


A doctor quoted by one of the reports explained the cause:

Dr Wang Guisong, an expert in the neurosurgery department at Renji Hospital, said overwork can make people more vulnerable to infections. “Based on her symptoms and her low white blood cell count, it’s reasonable to conclude that overwork led to a weakened immune system, which makes her more vulnerable to infections,” Wang said. “When an infection worsens over time, people can develop acute cerebral meningitis.”

According to the story, PwC has denied that Ms Jie died from work-related fatigue but it’s hard to argue that her fatigue was caused by anything else. The firm is providing psychologists for employees, has sent a “team” to comfort Jie’s family and has even offered to assist with the cost of her funeral and this kind of outreach is admirable but the overarching culture within Big 4 firms is really what is of concern here.

Fatigue from overworking is not uncommon in the Big 4 life but when someone dies as a result of the fatigue, that’s will obviously get some attention (even if it’s just for a little bit). At some point it became acceptable for sleep – and health in general – to become of secondary importance when it comes to having a successful career. If you don’t believe me, look around you; everyone is exhausted and that’s part of the life inside a Big 4 firm. The pressures of performance in the name of client service are so great that people regularly come to work when they should be in bed or, in some cases, an emergency room. Of course there’s the macho contingent inside these firms that say “sleep is for the weak” and that’s the kind of attitude that perpetuates the culture of “getting the job done.” How is this acceptable? Not only can lack of sleep kill you, it doesn’t really do much for job performance. We’ve all seen people make big mistakes when they’re lacking sleep and yet no one considers the root cause. If you think skipping a few hours of sleep a night is worth to a few thousand dollars a year (at best) then you’ve got some seriously fucked up priorities.

I admit that people aren’t dropping left and right inside these firms due to lack of sleep but let’s quit pretending like working hours upon hours, putting your health at risk and coming into work looking like – pardon the expression – death warmed up is some kind of badge of honor.

Oregon Accountant Indicted for Fatal Hit-and-Run

In aren’t-you-glad-this-isn’t-you news, an Oregon accounting director has been indicted on one count of criminally negligent homicide and one count of failure to perform the duties of a driver when a person is killed.


On January 26, Les Schwab Tire Center Director of Accounting Bret Lee Biedscheid, 38, allegedly hit Anthony Martin, 48, around 11 pm while Martin was crossing the street on his bicycle. The grand jury made their determination based on witness testimony and videotape evidence.

Two days after the incident, Biedscheid’s lawyer contacted police and surrendered the 2008 GMC pickup matching the description of the truck involved in the crash.

Bend, Oregon police later served search warrants on Biedscheid’s house and seized computers, cell phones, GPS devices and other items. “I feel like if it had been myself or anyone else, we would have already been arrested just on the evidence that they already had,” said the victim’s sister.

Biedscheid has not been arrested and is scheduled to be arranged Thursday morning.

Slow down out there when you’re heading home from ANO, kids.

Grand Jury Indicts Bend Man In Fatal Hit-And-Run [OPB News]

Grant Thornton Welcomes LECG Employees to the Brotherhood

After yesterday’s news that LECG that was more or less pulling the plug, Grant Thornton finally put out a press release that they were acquiring a “significant portion” of the company’s business.

GT is taking on 270 employees in Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Philadelphia and Portland across all its service groups. Naturally, Stephen Chipman is thrilled to share this dynamic news, “We are pleased to welcome these outstanding individuals to Grant Thornton LLP,” SC said, “I am confident that they will fit in perfectly with our people — intellectually curious, talented individuals who want to make a difference with their clients, in their workplace and in their communities.”

Which was a perfect segue into this:

“As I have stated before, our goal is to be the leading audit, tax and advisory firm serving dynamic organizations in our chosen markets,” continued Chipman. “Dynamic companies are companies that are ambitious and growing, expanding internationally. They are dealing with critical events or transactions and are in need of our value-added, integrated service solutions. We will continue to explore additional strategic mergers and acquisitions as our balance sheet is healthy [Ed. note: care to share?] and we are in a position to attract similar talent.”

In other words, GT is still on the prowl for more people to join their party. Any interested parties need to come with dynamism in boatloads.