You may be an accountant if...

• Your idea of trashing your hotel room is refusing to fill out the guest comment card; 
• You refer to your child as your 'entitlement to tax credits'; 
• You deduct Exlax as "Moving Expenses.
• At the movie "Indecent Proposal" you did a NPV calculation. 
• You decide to change your name to a symbol and you choose the double underline 
• If you have no idea that "GAP" is also a clothing store. 

 Any more?

You know you need a new accountant when....

Your Accountant begins the initial interview with "When I was in prison..."

After completing your tax return showing a balance due of £3,000, your Accountant asks for it in cash.

You see Your Accountant on TV. On Crimewatch

Your Accountant thinks "amortizstion" is Italian for "making love".

Every time you visit Your Accountant in his office, he's smoking a joint.

Your Accountant tells you "You probably won't go to jail for this, but..."

Your Accountant is also a Lawyer, and he's representing your wife in the divorce proceedings.

Your Accountant tells you he hasn't filed his own tax return in years

Your Accountant seems to have a cold all year long....and powder residue on his desk

Your Accountant insists that children are legal tender

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."

An Accountant's Lament

When you’re a child of say four or five,

Longing to grow up and be really alive,

You think about what you might do with your life –

“I’ll be a teacher” – “A fireman” – “A wife” –

“I’ll be a doctor” – “And I’ll be a nurse” –

“I’ll be a bad man” – “And I’ll be much worse”.

But tell me, has anyone heard a child say,

“I want to be an accountant one day”?

To sit in an office and struggle with numbers,

To be on the end of a client’s endless grumbles,

They simply don’t see why they MUST pay that VAT –

“My mate down the pub says he doesn’t pay that!”

Ticking and bashing through audits and recs,

Removing the claim for a client’s new specs,

Scrolling through spreadsheets till you’re fit to scream -

A set of correct books?  That’s just in a dream!

To have to keep patience with HMRC

When they bring in new rules that then change endlessly,

When they don’t answer letters and as for the phone –

“Forget it accountants, no, you’re on your own!”

Still, mustn’t complain, I could do a lot worse

(Like trying to write more of this awful verse!)

But I’m sure I’ll never hear my nephews say,

“I want to be an accountant one day”.

With thanks to accountant Emily Coltman, Director of Accounts in English Ltd for this poem which I think reveals rather a lot about her life!