Saturday, June 09, 2018

Gabe vs. Peter

It's not really much of a grudge match. The protagonists have never met each other and likely never will. Even if they did, it's likely they would get along just fine, swapping stories and anecdotes over their shared interests: no grudge at all. And yet because of those shared interests they are going head to head, with the field of play being me. 

Or more accurately, my books, such as they are. Like many small businesses, I deal not only with what I like to do but also with a myriad of administrative tasks. By and large, those involve areas in which I was never trained. Yes, I know the old saying in the law that a person who represents himself has a fool for a client. And you could also reasonably extend that sentiment to these other arenas. Still, in over 35 plus years on my own, I have of necessity often functioned as my own lawyer, paymaster, IT Director and bookkeeper. 

With one exception. When it comes to what I owe the government, I know I am over my head. Even before the latest bill officially entitled "To provide for reconciliation pursuant to Titles II and V of the concurrent resolution on the budget for fiscal year 2018" and more colloquially as the Tax Cut, I knew what I didn't know, and it was most of that stuff. And that's where Gabe came in. 

For more than 30 years he guided me through the thicket of rules and regs, helping me to pay my fair share and no more. A former accounting professor, he worked out of his converted garage, and every single message he left on my machine over three decades started with "Marc, this is Gabe, your accountant." Together we fought our way through 1040's, Schedule C's and the dreaded and incomprehensible K1. Through it all, we (using the papal plural) were only audited once, an ordeal that ended with me not having to pay anything other than a small adjustment, and with Gabe explaining to me the best attitude to have for our protagonists: "Screw them." 

But like Butch and Sundance, all good partnerships eventually come to an end. Gabe called me last summer to tell me he was hanging it up. "I'm 85, "he said. "Enough is enough." I didn't disagree, and offered him best wishes. He offered to see me through the rest of the year, but the handwriting was most assuredly on the ledger: I had to find a new accountant. 

And so we turned to Peter. He came highly recommended from a friend, had experience with my kind of business, and was knowledgeable and personable. Unlike Gabe, who steadfastly resisted all this new fangled com-poo-ter stuff and still faxed me missives, Peter is all electronic all the time. Documents, payments, reviews: all was uploaded and downloaded, scanned and e-whatever-ed. 

There are most assuredly other adjustments. Style, tone, accessibility; different for sure, but all easily negotiated and adapted to on both sides. The most obvious change is in the work product. With Gabe, he translated my scribbles into tax-ese, simplifying and combining my entries. So in the case of mileage, tolls and parking, I would list each separately, only to have him smoosh all together on a single line for "local travel." When I gave the same thing to Peter, he plugged it all in, and his software spit out 4 pages. The result was that while my entire tax transmittal from Gabe was a handful of pages, Peter's first draft almost gave me heart failure: it was 125 sheets long. The bottom line was the same, but many more electronic trees were killed to get me there. 

That aside, I'm happy to say the transition has been relatively painless. Like any new marriage, professional or otherwise, we're finding our level ground. We made it through tax season unscathed with a minimum of fuss. He managed to make sense of my rudimentary record keeping and got us back our returns to file on time. Most critically, he fulfilled the most important request I had. I asked that if in examining our returns over the past decades he found ways we could have saved huge amounts of money, he should just keep his mouth shut. Water under the bridge; I don't want to know. 

He has said nothing; we're getting along just fine.

-END-

Marc Wollin of Bedford tries to keep good records. His column appears regularly in The Record-Review, The Scarsdale Inquirer and online at http://www.glancingaskance.blogspot.com/, as well as via Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.

No comments: