I work as an accountant, helping a client with his quite abysmal bookkeeping. I sorted through his coffee-can of receipts, trying to teach him to keep proper records, when I discovered:

Me: “I see that one of your problems is that you often miss important dates or packages, making the post return to sender, and you having to pay an extra time and money to get the same things again.”

Client: “Yeah, it’s because I’m never here when they send me the letters or packages. It’s their fault.”

Me: “You generally get two to four weeks’ notice before the package is returned.”

Client: “Yeah, but mostly I don’t live at my address, it’s not MY fault.”

Me: “You don’t live at your address?”

Client: “There are WAY too many migrants in Sweden.”

Me: “I… don’t understand.”

Client: “So I moved to Italy! They HATE migrants there.”

Me: “You migrated to Italy, because there were too many migrants here.”

Client: “Yeah! And you should too, get away from the f****** [slur for Muslims] that only live on hand-outs—”

Me: “—Stop! I don’t want to hear it. I just wanted to point out that you lose a lot of money by not noticing every important letter and package. Maybe—”

Client: “—Yeah, yeah, I should hire someone to check my mail. But no one wants to work; only [slurs] ever say yes. No Swedes want to work anymore, only [slurs]—”

Me: “—Don’t call anyone that ever again if you want me to help you!”

Client: *Visibly worried.* “Geez, you people have thin skin!”

Me: “I’m happy to have thin skin then. I was going to say, maybe you should switch to paperless.”

Client: “Nah, that’s how they get you!

Me: “All right then.”

His company didn’t last for long. One of the major drains on his company was hiring us to do his paperwork, and another company to double-check in case the migrant-lover (me) cheated him out of spite.

He never listened to our very basic advice and always made everything take more time, because he thought it was our job to make stuff work, but we charge per hour. He lost basically everything in a very messy bankruptcy.

He did, however, inspire us to create a semi-regular game called “bigot bingo” where we let off steam and complain about stupid customers. We tell stories about bigots, especially how bigotry never pays, and we all have a little bingo card with typical bigot nonsense on it. The middle space in a 5×5 grid is “paradox immigrant”, which, for example, is complaining that no immigrants want to work AND that they also somehow take all the jobs, or that they only associate with “their own kind” AND that they steal all the good-looking girls.

The main advantage is that all new hires who think it’s bad to make fun of bigots either refuse the job or don’t get to work here.

It’s been a bad day filled with very difficult clients, and I’m on the phone with a coworker as we jointly try to figure out how to help a triad of clients who have already been bounced around a great deal.

The person who works the front desk has gone home with a medical emergency, but I still have clients scheduled to come in today, so I can’t just lock the front door. However, I’m also busier than a three-legged dog in a flea convention, so I’m not answering phones, which are ringing off the hook.

We’ve got a service that’s supposed to answer them and set up appointments, call backs, and take messages after they ring three times without an answer, so I’m not worried.

I’ve got two returns open physically on my desk, a third open on my computer, and I’m on the phone with a coworker talking through these interlinked returns while I shovel something that’s pretending to be lunch into my mouth. 

A woman comes in. I check to see if she’s my client by asking her name, which is not the name of my appointment, and I say:

Me: “I’ll get to you when I’m able.”

Honestly, I expect her to get sick of the wait and walk out. SHE DOES NOT HAVE AN APPOINTMENT. This is my scheduled time for shoveling food into my mouth and discussing these three returns with my coworker. THAT IS WHAT IS ON MY SCHEDULE FOR THE NEXT FIFTEEN MINUTES, unless my next client comes in early, and it’s been a client coming in early sort of day.

A few minutes later, she quite rudely interrupts my discussion with my coworker by reaching over and unplugging my headset.

Her: “I can hear you discussing sensitive details of other clients, which is making me quite nervous about how my own data security will be handled. Now, I have been waiting ten minutes, and I’d like to be seen.”

Keep in mind, since I am aware she’s present, I’ve neither been saying any names nor discussing specific numbers, just talking about tax law and talking about the three clients’ living and financial situations and how that affects it. They’ve got a complicated living situation, which isn’t important to the story, and an even more complicated financial one that’s even less important. The point is that what I’m sharing is not ‘identifiable’ information.

Me: “Okay. What do you want?”

Her: “I’d like to make an appointment.”

Me: “We’d prefer you call in.”

Her: “No one’s been answering.”

If the service hasn’t been doing what they’re supposed to do, that’s concerning, but many clients just hang up when the line transfers. I’m not sure which it is in this situation, but I make a memo to let my supervisors know.

Me: “Okay. What do you need the appointment for?”

Her: “I need to do an amendment.”

Me: “Okay. Any particular reason?”

Her: “I filed my taxes with you guys, and I need to file a Schedule H.” 

For those of you who are curious, a Schedule H is something you must file if you have ‘in-home employees’ such as nannies and au pairs.

Me: *Confused.* “The Schedule H should have been filed with the original return?”

Her: “It wasn’t. That’s why I need to file an amendment.”

Me: “Okay, so was it our error that led to that?”

Her: “No. I got the schedule H done elsewhere with another accountant, and now I need to file it with my taxes.”

Me: *Internally.* “Why. Why, why, why, why, why, would you do that?!”

Me: *Externally.* “Okay. Since it wasn’t our error, you’ll have to pay for the amendment. It’ll be a $29 fee for the federal amendment, a $70 one for the state amendment, and… I don’t have the price of a schedule H memorized, but I think that’s in the $50 to $70 range this year.”

Her: “Wait. Why are you charging me for the Schedule H?”

Me: “Because it’ll be part of the amendment.”

Her: “But I already paid to get it done elsewhere.”

Me: “Yes, and we’ll have to redo it to file our amendment.”

Her: “But I already paid to get it done elsewhere.”

Me: “And we’ll have to redo it.”

Her: “But why?”

Me: “Ma’am, if you walked into a sandwich shop and asked for a roast beef sandwich, and then brought your own roast beef and tried to get them to use it and demanded a discount for it, would you expect them to do so?”

Her: “What I… You’re very rude.”

Me: “I am.”

Her: “Is it possible to file an amendment myself?”

Me: “It is.”

Her: “I think I will.”

Me: “Okay. Goodbye.”

I plugged my headset back in and turned my attention away from her and got back to work. I did hear the door ding as she left.

This was my first year working for [Tax Accounting Franchise]. I was asked to work in a very small office with maybe five workers in it, compared to the [Nearby slightly larger town] office, my best friend was asked to work, which had about twenty, and the [Nearby city] office with just less than fifty.

Now, this is my very first year doing taxes. I am fresh out of training and full of facts. I quickly upset my coworkers.

See, I quickly developed a habit of asking all of the questions on the Schedule A. Now, those of you who might know taxes would know that Schedule A items usually don’t come off on your taxes: (at the time) you had to have ~$6,000 in Schedule A expenses before they came off. Now, thanks to Trump, you have to have ~$12,000.

But in Iowa, the Schedule A threshold is lower! Iowa has its own Schedule A, identical to the federal one, but it begins to affect your taxes at around $1,200.

So I ask those schedule A questions. Questions like ‘how much was the license plate renewal fee on your car?’ ‘Did you have any medical expenses? Glasses? Dental? Psychological?’ ‘Did you have any work-related expenses at your W2 job? (you can thank Trump for getting rid of that one too)’

After all of those questions, I always got the same result: ‘My prior tax pro never asked me those questions’. Said prior tax pro was usually sitting in earshot, and in my own stupid and poorly socialized way, I always responded ‘well, I don’t know why not, it’s what we were trained to do…’

This alone was enough to upset my coworkers, especially when clients started requesting me. As a first-year, I didn’t qualify to get commission, and they rightfully saw their clients leaving for me as a threat to their commissions.

But it got worse.

One of the questions was ‘Did you tithe money to your church?’ and, oh boy, did the residents tithe. They tithed massive quantities of money that made my head spin, much more than I had ever made per year. 7k. 8k. 12k. This isn’t just having an effect on their Iowa taxes anymore. Now, suddenly, their federal taxes are being affected.

Suddenly, these people are saving far more on their taxes than they had been before. They start telling their friends and sending their friends to me. The other four people in the office start seeing their clients drying up.

Well. They got upset with me. And I probably deserved it. I was… somewhat smug about it.

They found ways to get back at me, for example, making me wait on hold with the IRS or refusing to answer my questions… but I didn’t really notice what they were doing. I’m not the best at noticing these sorts of social things, and it wasn’t until after the fact that I realized that they were messing with me. I never minded waiting eight hours to finally talk to an IRS agent about something important.

So, since that didn’t bother me, they started throwing harder and harder clients at me. Instead of taking clients who just had a couple of W2s and maybe a child or two, they started giving me clients who had a babysitting business or who had a massive list of stocks that they traded this year. This stuff I had been trained for, but I didn’t know all of the tricks.

See, the other tax pros would bypass forms on our software, a trick I didn’t know how to do. By bypassing these forms, you could save the client money at the till (the client was charged by form filled, so by carrying information directly to the 1040 without filling out the supplemental forms, you could save the client money)

I didn’t know how to do that (and still refuse to do that because I’ve learned it leads to more letters from the IRS). Now, clients were complaining about how much I cost and how hesitant I was. I eventually rallied and got used to doing these more difficult returns. I got back in the groove.

Meanwhile, the other tax pros were reducing their hours at the office. I didn’t notice my hours creeping up, but I was soon working twelve-to-fourteen-hour days because no one else wanted to be on shift.

And then they sent me a client with a homeowner’s association. An 1120-H. I had never done one of those before. I had not been trained in doing those before.

I figured out how to get it done. In front of the client, I read the instructions and opened the software for it. I taught myself in front of the client and got it done. It took four hours.

The next day, I had six HOAs. I was still stressed from the first one and not sure I’d done it right. I got them all done, closed up for the day, and drove to the office of the owner. I broke down crying on her doorstep and explained what had happened.

She came down on my coworkers like fire and fury. After that, they were a lot gentler with me. A new manager was selected to be in charge of that office.

Related:
Taxing Taxing, Part 28
Taxing Taxing, Part 27
Taxing Taxing, Part 26
Taxing Taxing, Part 25
Taxing Taxing, Part 24

I used to keep the account books for several small businesses, and I often worked in their houses using their dining tables as a desk.

At one such house, the family had a golden retriever and a cat who seemed to be the best of friends. The retriever had been trained from puppyhood to give one bark when she wanted to be let in or out of the back door.

One day when the owners were out and I was working alone in the house, I heard the single bark and went to let the dog in. When I opened the door, the cat walked in, and the dog turned round and went back to her favourite spot in the garden, wagging her tail — her good deed for the day done!

A married couple came in to do their taxes. Their names were Michelle and Michael. They had the same last name because she had changed her name to match her husband’s when they got married.

For Minnesota state taxes, it’s important that income is entered under the correct person because their separate incomes are used to calculate the marriage tax credit.

The whole time I’m putting their taxes together, I’m accidentally putting it under the wrong person because the names are so similar, and the couple are correcting me like I’m a moron.

They’re getting cranky with me. I’m getting cranky with them for getting cranky with me. They make some nasty, sarcastic comments that, for my peace of mind, I’m choosing not to remember.

I get the taxes done and show them the numbers. They hit the roof; there’s no way that could be right. We go through each income document line by line once, twice, three times. They keep insisting that something is wrong. The fourth time, I noticed it.

One of the W2s mixed in with their W2s belongs to their son Michael (same last name), JUNIOR.

I point it out to them, grin my nastiest grin, and repeat one of their nasty, sarcastic comments about how hard can it be to tell people apart back at them.

They left the office quieter and somewhat more polite than they entered, but I still hope I don’t have to see them again next year.