5 fun tax related quotes

 Haven't posted any quotes about taxation for a while so here are some more:

" I'm proud to be paying taxes in the United States. The only thing is—I could be just as proud for half the money."
- Arthur Godfrey

"Worried about an IRS audit? Avoid what's called a red flag. That's something the IRS always looks for. For example, say you have some money left in your bank account after paying taxes. That's a red flag."
- Jay Leno

"Day in and day out, your tax accountant can make or lose you more money than any single person in your life, with the possible exception of your kids."
- Harvey Mackay

"There's nothing wrong with the younger generation that becoming taxpayers won't cure."
- Dan Bennett

"If you get up early, work late, and pay your taxes, you will get ahead -- if you strike oil."
- J. Paul Getty

Previous posts containing tax quotes can be found through this link

Bob Newhart's quotes about accounting

American funny man Bob Newhart originally trained to be an accountant.

He explains that when attempting reconciliations he reckoned that:

"as long as you got within two or three bucks of it, you were all right. But that didn’t catch on … At the end of the day I had to balance the petty cash with the slips—every time you give out money you had to get a slip. It had to balance. Well, I’d be there for three or four hours tying to figure out where the last dollar or dime went to. So finally I’d just take it out of my pocket and I’d put it in. If there were two dollars leftover, I’d take it out … And they told me you can’t do that. You gotta find it. I said, “you’re paying me five dollars an hour to find two cents—it doesn’t make sense.” So I wasn’t a very good accountant."

His 1988 biography quotes Newhart as saying that if he hadn’t taken a gamble with comedy he would still be an accountant:

“Keep in mind, when I started in the late fifties, I didn’t say to myself, ‘Oh, here’s a great void to fill—I’ll be a balding ex-accountant who specializes in low-key humor.’ That’s simply what I was and that’s the direction my mind always went in, so it was natural for me to be that way.” 

Other accountancy related quotes attributable to Bob include:

I worked in accounting for two and a half years, realized that wasn't what I wanted to do with the rest of my life, and decided I was just going to give comedy a try. 

Probably the best advice I ever got in my life was from the head of the accounting department, Mr. Hutchinson, I believe at the Glidden Company in Chicago, and he told me, 'You really aren't cut out for accounting. 

I've been told to speed up my delivery when I perform. But if I lose the stammer, I'm just another slightly amusing accountant. 

The truth is, I look like an accountant, which was my trouble. I looked the part of an accountant, so I’d get hired as an accountant even though I got my degree in management.”

More quotes

“I never ask my accountants to help me to make a decision. I rely on my gut feeling and then call in the accountants to make it work.”

Richard Branson

"When I asked my accountant if anything could get me out of the mess I am in now, he thought for a long time.... "yes" he said. "Death would help."

Robert Morley

Previous quotes on this blog can be found here, here and here

Revenge of the Taxpayer

I have just noticed this book on my shelves. I bought it long before I started this blog and have yet to plunder it for suitable material.

It is a privately published collection of anecdotes and humorous stories about income tax, accountants and suchlike from celebrities and public figures in aid of the Meningitis Trust a registered charity (number 803016).

An ideal gift for anyone you know who hates paying tax. This £6 book contains contributions from about 80 celebrities. Also included are some of the better known quotes and other tales from accountants, taxpayers and Inland Revenue officials.

Here's a link to the Revenge of the Taxpayer website which contains details of how to aquire your own copy.

Money, Money, Money - fun quotes

 "There's money. And then there's MY money"

- Anonymous client to accountant about funding a forthcoming tax bill

"Money is better than poverty, if only for financial reasons"
- Woody Allen

"I can't afford to die; I'd lose too much money"
- George Burns

"One of the mysteries of human conduct is why adult men and women are ready to sign documents they have not read, at the behest of salesmen they don't know, binding them to pay for articles they do not want, with money they do not have."
- Gerald Hurst,  

"Nothing is as irritating as the fellow who chats pleasantly to you while he's overcharging you."
- Kin Hubbard

"I haven't reported my missing credit card to the police because whoever stole it is spending less than my wife."
- Ilie Nastase

David Mitchell's funny explanation of tax avoidance

There are some great quotes in this clip which sees David Mitchell answering questions about tax avoidance during an interview on The Last Leg TV show in 2105.

"Vanilla flavoured. Less than vanilla, unflavoured tax avoidance"

At the other end of the spectrum, "Gary Bartlow's evil flavoured" tax avoidance

Tax avoidance involves "50 shades of grey. And that's not an ice cream flavour anyone wants!"

"Legal loopholes allowing tax avoidance mean the government is “taxing conscience” – the more of a conscience you have, the more you pay – and that isn’t right"

"We're taxing being nice"

Bad language alert in this clip:

The Utterly Uninteresting & Unadventurous Tales of Fred, the Vampire Accountant

Regular viewers of this blog will know that I generally avoid posting 'fun' items that reinforce the age old insulting misconception that all accountants are boring.

Occasionally though I come across items that just have to be featured here despite my best intentions. And this book, written by Drew Hayes and published in 2014,  is one such item.

Frederick Frankford Fletcher ("Fred") was "a mild mannered accountant" in life and in death. First with a heartbeat and then without. As one of the reviews suggests:

"He’s the same undead as he was alive – a boring accountant with low self-esteem. He also learned early on that he is not good at the whole stalking prey, eating straight from the vein thing. So, he gave that up and gets his blood from a hospital as a favor for cooking their books."

I'm no fan of the whole vampire genre but the reviews I have seen of this book were enough to encourage me to download the kindle version (it was free when I did so) from Amazon.

Further review quotes:

Goodreads

Some people are born boring. Some live boring. Some even die boring. Fred managed to do all three, and when he woke up as a vampire, he did so as a boring one. Timid, socially awkward, and plagued by self-esteem issues, Fred has never been the adventurous sort.

Zombie J 

The only small problem I had with this otherwise likeable book is it did get somewhat repetitive. Fred constantly reminded us of how boring, timid, non-confrontational, and non-vampirish he is. But he was one of those characters that is really pretty charming, even if he doesn’t know it himself. He’s quite adorkable, actually.

4 quotes about the tax system

"The income tax has made liars out of more Americans than golf."
WILL ROGERS

"Who is the figure behind every great man, the individual who knows his ultimate secrets? A father confessor? Hell no, the tax expert."
LOUIS ARCHINCLOSS

"A tax loophole is something that benefits the other guy. If it benefits you it is tax reform."
SENATOR RUSSELL B LONG

"Taxation with representation ain't so hot either."
GERALD BARZAN

"I'm proud to be paying taxes in the United States. The only thing is - I could be just as proud for half the money."
ARTHUR GODFREY

Bookkeeping and Accounting in 1945

This vocational guidance video shows what it was all about 70 years ago in 1945. It makes clear the distinction between bookkeepers and accountants, and mentions almost in passing their reliance on 'machines'.

The video also distinguishes the work of private accountants, who work in-house and public accountants who have many different clients. In the US they are still called CPAs (Certified Public Accountants). 

Accountants are also responsible for devising new bookkeeping systems and new methods of cost accounting. Accountants who specialise in this area were known as 'efficiency engineers' as an engineering background was very useful.

There's also career advice relevant to anyone considering bookkeeping or accounting (in 1945!)

Loved these quotes: 

"Because his job takes him form place to place, where he meets all kinds of people he must have a pleasing personality to be successful" NB: There is a clear presumption that all accountants were male in those days.

"Perhaps the most colourful accounting work is that of making special investigations". They worked for the FBI.

What's your favourite element of this old video?

7 top fun quotes about taxes

"Our tax code is so complicated, we've made it nearly impossible for even the Internal Revenue Service to understand."
FORMER TREASURY SECRETARY PAUL O'NEILL

"The United States is the only country where it takes more brains to figure your taxes than to earn the money to pay it."
SENATOR EDWARD J GURNEY (FLORIDA 1969-1974)

"The way I look at this, we essentially have a tax system that's held together by chewing gum and chicken wire."
ASSISTANT TREASURY SECRETARY FOR TAX POLICY PAMELA F OLSEN

"A friend is one who takes you to lunch even if you're not tax deductible."
JACK BENNY

"If Patrick Henry thought that taxation without representation was bad, he should see how bad it is with representation."
FARMER'S ALMANAC

"The tax code last year included 2.8 million words. The Holy Bible itself has only about 775,000 words. Obviously, God did not need to issue such copious instructions for living as we currently have for complying with tax laws."
SENATOR ORRIN HATCH

"The hardest thing in the world to understand is the income tax."
ALBERT EINSTEIN

Why famous people didn't want to be accountants

Three related quotes I came across recently:

The first is attributed to Sir Trevor Holdsworth, then Chairman of National Power and a former chairman of GKN plc. Apparently, when he was younger he had hopes of being a musician but bowed to his parents' wishes and became an accountant.

"To be an accountant is a choice of the head, not the heart...to be an accountant is a second choice. It lacks the vocational flavour of the doctor or the cleric, the romance of the armed services...and the born instinct and natural ability of the artist and musician."

Chris Blackwell, the founder of Island Records, worked for a short time in Accountancy. In July 1989 the Mail On Sunday reported him as describing this period of his life as:

"The closest to Hell I've ever been"

And Godfrey Bradman, then Chairman and Joint Chief Executive of Rosehaugh plc was reported to have said to the Independent newspaper on 30 October 1989 that:

"I wake up every morning and thank God that I'm not a Chartered Accountant any longer, but involved with property."

Bob Newhart's theory of accounting

American funny man Bob Newhart originally trained to be an accountant. He explains that when attempting reconciliations he reckoned that:

"as long as you got within two or three bucks of it, you were all right. But that didn’t catch on … At the end of the day I had to balance the petty cash with the slips—every time you give out money you had to get a slip. It had to balance. Well, I’d be there for three or four hours tying to figure out where the last dollar or dime went to. So finally I’d just take it out of my pocket and I’d put it in. If there were two dollars leftover, I’d take it out … And they told me you can’t do that. You gotta find it. I said, “you’re paying me five dollars an hour to find two cents—it doesn’t make sense.” So I wasn’t a very good accountant."

His 1988 biography quotes Newhart as saying that if he hadn’t taken a gamble with comedy he would still be an accountant:

“Keep in mind, when I started in the late fifties, I didn’t say to myself, ‘Oh, here’s a great void to fill—I’ll be a balding ex-accountant who specializes in low-key humor.’ That’s simply what I was and that’s the direction my mind always went in, so it was natural for me to be that way.”

Guess what he's talking about

It was only when I was gifted a subscription to 'Private Eye' for my 50th birthday that I became an avid reader and fan. What have I been missing all these years?!

I've already commented on one item from this week's issue on my Tax Advice Network blog. This one is in a similar vein but more light hearted as befits this blog.

It concerns Tory backbencher Sir Nicholas Winterton and quotes an extract of his contribution to a debate in the House of Commons, as recorded in Hansard on on 7 July:

I am concerned about the elderly who need to use [xxxx].
Is [the Minister] concerned about the fact that elderly people, in particular, may not be getting value for money or a fair deal, because the system is so complicated that they do not understand how to go through it...?.

Of course you might imagine the xxxx refers to some element of the tax or tax credits system. It could so easily do so, couldn't it?! In fact Sir Nicholas was bemoaning the difficulties that the elderly have with public transport. If only that was all they had to worry about.

Accountancy quotes

Accounting: A bunch of numbers running around looking for an argument.

If you need accounting to prove it, it was probably not true in the first place.

Obviously accounting pays, otherwise there would be no accountants.

There is nothing more permanent than temporary account.

Accounting will prove anything, even the truth.

Accounting is economics without assumptions.

Notable quotes - from history

"Britain will have the simplest VAT in Europe"
- then Chancellor of the Exchequer - Anthony Barber, 1972

"I'm a stickler for tidiness in the office"
- Secretary to tax avoider extraordinaire, Roy Tucker, explaining to the Court why she had thrown away his diaries, 1980

"If it looks like a duck, walks like a duck and quacks like a duck, then it's a duck"
- Sir David Tweedie, when chief of the Accounting Standards Board, explaining the difference between debt and equity, 1993

‘Those of you who have read the standard on financial instruments (IAS39) and understood it have not read it properly."
- Sir David Tweedie again, as Chairman of the IASB, delivering a speech at the London Business School, 2005

"The safest job in the city is Accountancy"
- Headline in Accountancy Age, 1976

"I don't have any use for bodyguards, but I do have a specific use for two highly trained certified public accountants."
- Elvis Presley

"My money goes to my agent, then to my accountant and from him to the tax man. "
- Glenda Jackson

"People always ask me, 'Were you funny as a child?' Well, no, I was an accountant. "
- Ellen DeGeneres

Two tax quotes

"What Mae West said about sex is true about taxes. All tax cuts are good tax cuts; even bad tax cuts are good tax cuts."
-- Grover Norquist

"There's nothing wrong with the younger generation that becoming taxpayers won't cure."
-- Dan Bennett

Imagine if unqualified accountants were like street walkers....

This video references Street Accountants suggesting they have taken over parts of London performing accounting services out in the open for everyone to see. It's actually an Australian parody.

To give you an idea of what to expect it includes the quotes:

I give my client what real accountants can't.

I'm a street accountant, I work the streets.

How about a little numbers action?

I've got certain financial needs and they can service them for me.

Used calculators, dirty balance sheets, sharpened pencils all left lying around.

The police can't do anything unless they catch them performing accounting services on the street

I've left my chartered accountant for ever. I want to be your only client.

VAT a daft idea for a builder taking cash in hand

Years ago, I lived literally a block down the road from the local VAT office. I got some quotes for a new driveway, and the best price by far was from a well-known local firm who gave me a double discount: one for paying cash (nudge nudge, wink wink, mind the VAT, know what I mean guv'nor), and one for putting their sign up to let the world know who did the work. Including, I suppose, the local VAT-man!

Story related by Andrew Horder

6 fun quotes showing what Americans think about paying taxes

“The government deficit is the difference between the amount of money the government spends and the amount it has the nerve to collect.” – Sam Ewing

“And now I lay me down to sleep. I pray the Lord my soul to take, if the tax-collector hasn’t got it before I wake.” – Ogden Nash

“There’s nothing wrong with the younger generation that becoming taxpayers won’t cure.” – Dan Bennett

“Worried about an IRS audit? Avoid what’s called a red flag. That’s something the IRS always looks for. For example, say you have some money left in your bank account after paying taxes. That’s a red flag.” – Jay Leno

“Tax day is the day that ordinary Americans send their money to Washington, D.C., and wealthy Americans send their money to the Cayman Islands.” – Jimmy Kimmel

“It’s income tax time again, Americans: time to gather up those receipts, get out those tax forms, sharpen up that pencil, and stab yourself in the aorta.” – D. Barry

OTS went boldly where no taxman has gone before

Direct quotes from Michael Jack's Forward in the first report of the Office for Tax Simplification.

“To boldly go where no man has gone before” was the proud boast of the crew of Star Trek’s USS Enterprise. I think that this phrase must have been in the Chancellor’s mind when, last July, he set us off on our voyage of discovery into the world of tax reliefs and allowances.

During our voyage of discovery (which has lasted a mere five months rather than the five years of USS Enterprise) we found...