Friday Footnotes: Sin Taxes; PwC and Blockchain; Brics and Ticks | 01.29.16

Posted on January 29, 2016June 10, 2022 by Going Concern News Desk

Always read the footnotes, capital market servants. Drop us links and tips over the weekend by hitting the button at the top of the page or emailing us directly. Follow us on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest and subscribe to our daily newsletter. Submit questions, career conundrums and Iowa Caucus predictions in Open Items.

Dave Camp Says Tax Code Makes U.S. Companies Ripe Takeover Targets [Bloomberg]

What do indoor tanning, shopping bags, junk food, alcoholic beverages, tobacco, “gas guzzling” cars, ozone-depleting chemicals, sugary drinks, marijuana, gasoline, coal, carbon-containing fuels, and financial transactions have in common? Taxes that discourage them. [TaxVox]

David Bowie: Tax Planning Hero [Tax Foundation]

PwC becomes first 'Big Four' accounting firm to publicly partner with blockchain startups [NYBJ]

The Brics are dead. Long live the Ticks [FT]]

DeLorean Is Back to the Future After Congress Nixes Red Tape [Bloomberg]

Billionaire Conservationist's Yacht Damages Coral Reef [NG]

Cereal offenders: Tony the Tiger begs furries to stop tweeting him porn [The Guardian]

'Where's dad bod Ken?' [CBC]

News

Local CPA Ups Ante on Client Service

Caleb Newquist
October 7, 2010

What have you done for your clients lately? Worked through the night to meet a big deadline? Great job. Attended a bar mitzvah? That’s nice. Saved them oodles of dough by navigating a tricky divorce? You’re a rock star.

But until you’re willing to part with a kidney (or better), you’re a basically a chump compared to Jeff Waters.

You see, Jeff likely does everything that most CPAs do – bend over backwards for idiot clients; helps them deal with nosy IRS agents; explains why an incompetent Congress is likely to bungle the estate tax and so on and so forth.

But when his clients, the Fitzgeralds, were in one day chit-chatting about 1099s, a more serious problem (failing kidney serious, not heart attack serious) came up:

The week before standing in Waters’ office, the Fitzgeralds were told a kidney was available for [their daughter] Kelly, but at the last minute, the transplant had to be cancelled because the kidney turned out to be damaged.

“I thought, any problem I have pales in comparison to something like that,” Waters remembers. “I told (Fitzgerald), ‘I can’t even imagine you’re here today doing taxes when something like that happens.'”

Fitzgerald told him, “Well, we just learned to never get our hopes up. We just need to find another B positive donor.”

“That’s when it clicked,” Waters said. “I knew from my LifeSource Donor Card that I was B positive.”

And you can take it from there. Of course Jeff gave his kidney away. All he had to do was put on a cape and re-re-convince some pushy medical staff, “Waters says medical staff repeatedly told him not to feel pressured to go through with the transplant,” and like we said, he went under the knife and made it happen.

We realize not everyone is jumping at the opportunity for voluntary surgery and some are bound by religious whathaveyous but just think about it. Do you really need two kidneys?

Wheaton Accountant Does Taxes, Donates Kidney for Client [Wheaton Patch]