6 things I hate accountants doing on Linkedin

1.  Overly personal posts better suited to facebook
2.  Being negative and critical 
3.  Starting something they fail to complete 
4.  Sharing simple lists with no real context 
5.  Irony

5 questions that make accountants cringe

1. My friend doesn't include cash sales in his accounts. Why should I? 
2. Why should I have to pay tax, I have private healthcare and the kids go to boarding school?
3. How do I become a company like my pal and then not pay any tax?
4. What does 'Dave down the pub' mean when he says I can just borrow money from my company and not pay any tax on it?
5. Why haven't you told me I can claim all my food and drink bills through the business? 

10 more popular films with accountancy related themes

1. Minority audit report – In a future where a special audit unit is able to establish whether accounts are true and fair before they start their fieldwork, an officer from that unit is himself accused of a future fraud. 
2. File Hard with a vengeance - A tax adviser gets a little carried away when he can't access the Companies House portal he uses to submit annual accounts. 
3. The Signing – An auditor becomes possessed while on an away job in an isolated hotel where an evil and spiritual presence influences the RI, while his audit team sees horrific forebodings from the past and of the future. 
4.  Final estimation – a group of young auditors try and fail to escape death after miscalculating depreciation charges. 
5. The Accountant - Chaos ensues when an efficient accountant who is a bit too focused on his work forgets to keep track of his time and which client should pay the bills. 
6. ACA Ventura: PET detective – Jim Carrey stars as a personal tax accountant who goes in search of a dolphin gifted as a potentially exempt transfer for inheritance tax purposes. 
7. Accrual Runnings – a team of Jamaican accountants with absolutely no knowledge of UKGAAP come to the UK and set up as an audit firm. Hilarity ensues. 
8. SA SA Land - a musical imagining of what would happen if everyone filed their SA tax returns with a smile each year 
9. Home A-Loan – an incredibly boring film about a child trying to get a mortgage but failing because he’s too young. 
10. Groundhog day - An outgoing accountant resolves never again to allow his clients to force him to work crazy hours in January.

An accountant's shocking Christmas confession

Seen on a website for anonymous confessions: 

 

"I’m an accountant. Every Christmas our office has a secret vote for the client who has been the biggest pain in the backside. We then report the winner to HMRC regardless of whether we have any concerns about their tax affairs. Invariably they get a full audit so we get more work. It’s win win".

Sometimes we're not as clear as we might be....

Accountants frequently ask new clients to either bring their passport into the office or to supply certified copies of the passport. 

It's a requirement of the anti-money laundering regulations. 

An accountant told me that a new client once sent him an unusual package. 

On opening it the accountant found a copy of the client's passport. What else? Another one. Same as the first. And another, and another. 

Indeed the package simply contained almost 3 dozen photocopies of the client's passport. None had been certified by a solicitor - or anyone. 

The accountant called the client to acknowledge receipt of the package and to find out why he had sent so many copies - and not had any of them certified. 

The client was pleased to hear the package had arrived safely. 

"I should have checked as I must have misheard you. 'Certified copies' makes much more sense. I thought you asked for 35 copies."

A variation on The Traitors - just for accountants

The Tax Avoiders 

Twenty accountants gather in a grand country estate for what’s billed as “a professional ethics retreat.” 

Unbeknownst to the majority, three are secretly Tax Avoiders — slick operators who still believe it’s “perfectly legitimate” to run your income through a dormant company in Gibraltar. 

Their mission: blend in, smile politely, and drop hints about “completely legal loopholes” without getting caught. 

Each day, the group faces ethical challenges such as: 

• Would you still take on a client if they paid in crypto and said ‘don’t ask’? 
• Spot the disguised remuneration scheme
• Rebrand a tax shelter as a ‘wealth retention structure’ ” 
• Bonus round: Design a new company car scheme that somehow includes a yacht. 

The faithful accountants spend their evenings debating clues around the dinner table. 

• “Did you hear her say ‘aggressive planning’ or ‘HMRC will never notice’?” 
• “I swear he winked when someone mentioned ‘creative compliance’.” 

Meanwhile, the Avoiders sneak off to the drawing room to whisper about EBTs, letters of comfort, and how they’re “friends with a barrister who says it’s fine.” 

At The Reconciliation Dinner, one accountant is expelled each night. 

Accusations fly: 

• “He’s too smooth — definitely used to speak at film partnership seminars.” 
• “She said she ‘advises high-net-worth individuals’. That’s code for trouble.” 
• “He called HMRC ‘the opposition’ as if he's in a constant battle with them” 

By the final episode, only a handful remain — desperately trying to decide who’s clean and who once claimed a yacht as a ‘mobile meeting facility’. 

Will integrity prevail? Or will one of the Tax Avoiders walk away with the super-high fee — and the quiet confidence that they’ll have moved to Dubai long before HMRC come knocking?

What is an ACCOUNTANT?

An ACCOUNTANT is someone who:

Analyses figures 

Calculates calmly 

Counsels clients 

Organises chaos 

Unlocks understanding 

Navigates numbers 

Tames tax 

Avoids assumptions 

Nurtures trust 

Transforms businesses

10 famous films with accountancy related themes

1. Never say never again - An outgoing accountant resolves never again to allow his clients to force him to work crazy hours in January. 
2. 10 things I hate to accrue (starring Heath “Nominal” Ledger) 
3. Schindler’s Listing – A heartbreaking story about Schindler floating his company on the FTSE.
4. Dude! Where’s my FAR? – A comedy about two guys who misplace their Fixed Asset Register. 
5. The Shawshank Exemption – a film about a wrongly convicted banker who helps guards avoid an audit [Bit ironic if you know what it was really about!] 
6. LIFO Pi - An abstract story about an unaccepted accounting estimate stranded on a boat with a tiger.
7. InSSAPtion – A sci-fi blockbuster hit about the implantation of statements of standard accounting practices into one’s subconscious. 
8. Star Wars: Annual Return of the Jedi – Luke Skywalker battles against an evil empire when he discovers they aren’t filing their annual returns with companies house on time. 
9. Accrual intentions – Sarah Michelle Gellar stars as a wealthy teenager taking Reese Witherspoon, a naïve student, under her wing to teach her the accruals concept. 
10. An ACA is born - The senior partner of a large firm, encourages the career of a talented young partner who eventually takes over running the firm

A junior accountant asks for a raise....

A student accountant in the US wrote to his senior partner asking for an increased salary:

---

Dear Bo$$ 

In thi$ life, we all need $ome things mo$t de$perately. 

I think you $hould be under$tanding of the need$ of u$ $tudent$ who have given $o much $upport including $weat and $ervice to the firm. 

 I am $ure you will gue$$ what I mean and re$pond $oon. 

Your$ $incerely

Norman 

---

The next day, the senior partner sent this letter of reply: 

---

Dear NOrman, 

I kNOw you have been working very hard. 

NOwadays, NOthing much has changed. 

You must have NOticed that the firm is NOt doing NOticeably well at present. 

NOw the newspapers are saying the world`s leading ecoNOmists are NOt sure if the United States may go into aNOther recession. 

After the NOvember presidential elections things may turn bad. 

I have NOthing more to add NOw. 

You kNOw what I mean. 

 

Yours truly,

An Accountant dies and goes to heaven...

 An Accountant dies and goes to heaven.

Saint Peter starts asking him all the usual questions required to get into heaven.

The accountant, it seems, has repeatedly helped people cheat on their taxes and embezzle funds.

Finally, in exasperation, St Peter asks, “Well, have you ever done anything good, anything totally unselfish and altruistic in your entire life?”

“Well,” says the accountant, “Once I saw this pretty lady being beaten up by a bunch of hoodies. So I yelled “Hey jerks, why don’t you pick on somebody your own size” and then I reached for my mobile phone to call the police, and took off running. They forgot about her for a second and she managed to run also.

Saint Peter asks, “I’m looking through the book of your life, and I don’t see this incident recorded. When did it occur?”

The accountant replies, “About five minutes ago.”

5 new acronyms for accountants

I'm a bit of an acronymaniac. Here are some that might be useful for accountants.

AFLO 
We've all had them. Challenges or things that don't go as we hoped. We might smack our forehead in frustration. Maybe January was an AFLO for you this year. Another Flipping Learning Opportunity!

TIOLI 
Maybe this is your approach when talking with clients about your service offerings: Take It Or Leave It

DARE
An approach to following up after attending networking events: Deliberate Acts of Relationship Enhancement.

HIPPO
Another way of explaining why the senior partner gets the last word. It's because it's the Highest Paid Person's Opinion.

GLIBO
What you might think of these acronyms. They offer a GLIBO: Glimse of the Bleeding Obvious

The interchageable accountant

I love this story of the interchageable accountant.

Peter wanted a new accountant. He spent ages asking around his local area and getting positive testimonials. 

He eventually chose a very reputable firm based on several recommendations.

Unfortunately, the day he went for his appointment he was running late and inadvertently walked into the accountants next door to the ones he was supposed to be visiting. 

They said they had no recollection of his appointment (not surprising really), but sent him to an office really quickly and in no time he was talking to his new accountant.

Peter says he has since been really happy with the service they provide and wouldn't change them - even though it did eventually become apparent that they weren't the firm he intended to approach. 

He's glad he did all that research!

Putting accountants out of business

Fifty years ago, in 1965, the Chancellor (Jim Callaghan) introduced his Budget Speech with the prophecy that he would so simplify the system that accountants would be put out of business. 

The 1965 Budget is particularly memorable as it introduced two new concepts - Corporation tax and Capital Gains Tax. 

At the time, famed (and now retired) tax specialist Adam Broke was a newly married breadwinner. 

He was initially concerned that perhaps there would be no future for tax advisers. 

He recalls that the Chancellor's ambitions were thwarted by the inclusion in his proposals of "small minded concepts such as close companies". 

As a result, Adam said he spent only milliseconds worrying whether he had chosen the wrong career. 

Little has changed over the last 50 years. Each tax change that purports to introduce simplicity into the tax system is similarly bedevilled by undue complexity, oversights and 'small minded concepts'.

10 alternative Job Titles for Accountants

1. Anxiety Transfer Expert – because your panic is our spreadsheet
2. Business Continuity Practitioner – making sure your cash flow doesn’t flatline
3. Numbers Facilitator – like a counsellor, but with pivot tables
4. Finance Doctor – diagnosis: terminally overdrawn
5. Money Multiplier – no rabbits, just receipts
6. MANIAC (Money And Numbers Inspector And Counter) – the acronym that audits itself
7. Cash Whisperer – fluent in the secret language of HMRC and petty cash
8. Revenue Therapist – tell me where it hurts (and show me the P&L)
9. The Profit Prophet – we see margin in your future
10. Cash Flow Curator – we don’t create liquidity, we just make it look nice

Credits: MANIAC devised by Adrian Markey, Finance Doctor inspired by Mark Allen, Business continuity practitioner by Kris McCulloch and Money multiplier by Michelle Eshkeri

The Plumber & the Self-Assessment Saga

Plumber: “Right, be honest — how bad is it if I’ve not done any bookkeeping since last April?”

Accountant: “Bad. But fixable. Like a leaky tap.”

Plumber: “What if it’s a full-blown burst pipe situation?”

Accountant: “Then I charge emergency call-out rates. Only joking. Mostly.”

Plumber: “Fair. I’ve clogged up the admin. Time to flush it out.”

Tell me you're an accountant without telling me you're an accountant…

• I can’t relax in a café if I can see the till is open too long.

• My friends think “a quick tax question” is an acceptable start to any conversation.

• I once said “that’s disallowable” out loud during a family dinner.

• I judge people for how they organise their receipts. Or don’t.

• My partner gets nervous whenever I say “Can I just ask… what was this for?”

• I've explained what dividends are at least 47 times this year.

• I’ve laughed out loud at accounting memes. Then corrected them.

• I automatically say yes please for a receipt regardless of the transaction 

• Whenever a friend buys me a drink or lunch they sit in my head as creditors as I owe them one back! 

• I can’t cope if my laptop doesn’t have a separate number pad 

•  When I'm out with self employed friends they always ask me if they can claim it as an expense.

• I keep receipts for things I didn’t even pay for, just out of habit.

 

How to describe a glass that's half full/empty

To the pessimist, it is 1/2 empty

To the optimist, it’s 1/2 full

To Excel, it is 1st February. (Jan 2nd in the US)

To an AI chatbot, there isn't enough data to describe that

To a recruiter, it's not enough - as you deserve a glass that’s always full

To an accountant, the glass is twice as big as it needs to be 

Childhood ambitions that point to accountancy

While my friends played tag, I played "compliance audit" and issued playground-wide risk reports.

Other kids drew castles. I drew cash flow forecasts and colour-coded them by quarter.

I used to alphabetise my sweets and depreciate the ones with sticky wrappers.

I didn’t just play Monopoly. I insisted on calculating net asset value before buying Mayfair.

I dreamt of reconciling my toy till against the chocolate coins in my piggy bank.

As a child, I loved hide and seek — mostly because it mimicked forensic bookkeeping.

My imaginary friend was Inlander Revenyoo We had long chats about allowable expenses.

I was the only kid who ran a tuck shop with monthly management accounts and variance analysis.

Even at five, I believed every teddy bear tea party needed a robust audit trail.

I once grounded myself for breaching pocket money procurement protocol.

When I got a Scalextric, I immediately performed a cost-benefit analysis on the loop-the-loop.

Tax offences in the bedroom – a lesson in lust and legislation

A hunky accountant and a charmingly assertive tax inspector give in to their mutual attraction and check into a hotel.

Before things go too far, the inspector insists they cover the topic of protection.

She smiles and says, “This is the perfect opportunity to help you understand tax offences... in a more practical context.”

“Neglect,” she explains, “would be you claiming you simply forgot to bring protection – an honest mistake, but one you’ll regret later.”

“Wilful default is refusing to use the protection I’ve provided – even though you’ve been made fully aware of the risks and consequences.”

“Fraud,” she says, narrowing her eyes, “is when you look me in the eye and claim you’ve had the snip – when in fact, you haven’t even booked the consultation.”

The accountant gulps. “So what happens if I comply fully?”

She winks.
“Well then, you’ve filed everything correctly and on time. No penalties. And possibly… a small reward.”

Little known laws of accountancy clients

The Law of Disappearing Clients 

The closer it gets to the filing deadline, the harder it is to contact them. 

The Law of Last-Minute Miracles 

Clients will always “find” a vital document within seconds of you submitting the accounts. 

The Law of Shoebox Expansion 

No matter how small the original box, its contents will multiply under scrutiny. 

Murphy’s Ledger Law 

The client who insists their records are immaculate will have at least one year missing. 

The Law of Tax Time Amnesia 

No one remembers you telling them how much tax they'd owe when they get a late payment demand gtom HMRC

The Law of Perfect Hindsight 

Everything that went wrong in the accounts is, apparently, your fault for not being psychic.

The Biscuit Budget Rule 

The value of client hospitality is inversely proportional to the size of the fee. 

The Law of Magical Thinking 

Some clients believe tax bills shrink if you glare at them long enough. 

The PDF Law 

Any document urgently needed will be sent as a photo of a printed PDF taken at an angle. 

The Law of Refund Envy 

Clients who owe tax will always know someone who got a refund, and want to know why you didn’t work that same magic.