When You Become Independent Of Management

Way back when I first started as an accountant, I had a client get upset with me because I wouldn’t let her claim her twenty-two-year-old son.

She and her husband (who behaved as a non-entity this whole conversation) made $500,000 per year between the two of them, and she was responsible for about $350,000 of that.

Her son was out of college, made $100,000 per year, and didn’t live with them.

I asked all the questions:

Me: “Is he disabled?”

Me: “Does he live with you?”

Me: “How much does he make?”

Me: “Is he in college?”

Each answer pointed to them not being able to claim him on their taxes. Finally, I told them flat out:

Me: “You cannot claim him on your taxes.”

Client: *Extremely upset.* “I wanted you to cite a specific passage in tax law saying that my son can’t be claimed!”

Me: “There isn’t a specific passage; there are about six passages scattered across four different sections.”

I showed her individual passages individually, but as soon as a passage wasn’t in her sight, she forgot about it, and she couldn’t connect the different definitions of ‘claimed’ and ‘dependent’ together in her head. She kept pointing to tangents that did not count for her situation, like ‘still in college’ or ‘disabled’ or ‘lived with and provided more than half of the support’ or ‘divorced parents splitting the child’. We kept going in circles, and it made me later and later for my next client, who had arrived.

Finally, I had an outburst:

Me: “Look. I’m the tax accountant here. I was trained for this. You clearly were not, and you obviously are failing to understand. I was trained in this; you are not. I understand this, you don’t. You can’t claim your son. Either sign and pay for your taxes or leave.”

Grudgingly, they signed and paid for their taxes. They complained to my district general manager about it, and I got a write-up.

Years later, I’m an enrolled agent and running my own accounting firm that specializes in taxes. I have partners (employees I granted ~2% ownership so we can be less unequal because I suffered so much trauma from typical corporate structures and didn’t want to inflict that upon others) who prefer to take the less complicated clients and I get to focus on the more complicated ones who are more fun to do (and who my partners hate to do).

One of my former managers is a 20% partner; she helped to pay in at the very start, and she mans the receptionist desk for us all: A skill she is extremely good at.

I get a client, a young man. I take him on because he has a lot of really fun and crunchy investments… five K1s, some crypto, a few straddles, some rental real estate properties, an oil well in North Dakota, even a farm plot in Wisconsin he’s sharecropping out. This is serious fun. I’m honestly considering giving him a discount just because I’m having so much fun. I’ve never quite understood why my partners prefer to do easy returns.

He’s also barely twenty-one, he makes about $120,000 per year at his W2 job, and he’s still in college.

He tells me his parents want to claim him as a dependent, but he fairly obviously doesn’t count as a dependent: He clearly provides more than half of his own support. I ask him all the questions:

Me: “Who pays for your apartment?”

Me: “Who pays for your entertainment?”

Me: “Who pays for your food?”

Me: “Who pays for your college?”

I explain that he has to claim himself: None of the answers he gave me indicate that his parents are permitted to claim his exemption.

So, he calls his parents. They come in. They make a big show of it; they roll up in a god-d*** white limo.

These parents make $750,000 between them in their W2 jobs. That’s before their myriad investments.

Parents: “Provide citations showing our son can’t be claimed as a dependent.”

This time, I just shrug and very openly delete his return-in-progress, delete our stored scans of the tax documents, then hand the son back all of his original documents.

They spluttered at me, flabbergasted.

Me: “Was that all?”

Mother: “What… why are you…”

Me: “I’m refusing you service. You’re denying my basic competency in one of the basic aspects of taxation: Determining dependency. If you were questioning me about something like state allocation of K1 income, or the exact handling of non-cash distributions, or something like that, I would have been more than happy to hand you a citation. I do that all the time for IRS agents who don’t know the law as well as I do. But this? No. This is too basic and foundational. This is a statement that you don’t trust me to do your son’s taxes. And that’s fine. Have a nice day.”

She started yelling at that point, that she would complain to my manager, laced with a few profanities, but my wonderful receptionist was standing by the door. She opened it up, let them believe she was the manager, and ushered them out. They left.

Later, the parents called me to complain. I just muttered:

Me: “Oh, it’s you two f***ers.”

I snorted a quick laugh and hung up.

I f****** love being self-employed.