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An Accountant’s Ecstatic Truth.

June 30, 2025 by Exangel

by Justin Wacker.

“But what about the ethics of that?” I say and my hand slaps on the desk but just as fast as it hits the cherry wood surface, I draw my arm back into my chest, trying to hide what just happened.

He looks at me as if I have just set his cherry red BMW ablaze. Reverberations from my desk-slap mix with the click-clack sounds of Liddy’s 10-key calculator and it is noticeable that neither of us are talking anymore. His eyes dart to his phone and his face morphs from its usual look of disgust to one of concern. My eyes follow his and we are both staring at the phone. And it rings. And I’m grateful for the break in the silence and he picks it up before the first trill finishes and talks rights away and says something about Kevin Corp and motions to me for privacy. So I leave.

He was caught off-guard, I tell myself as I close the door behind me. Rushing in unannounced was an awful way to get his attention, but I was tired of receiving call after call from Kevin after Kevin asking about the status of their PMD transaction. I don’t even understand why I am getting these calls. Sure, Kevin, LLC is a client of mine, but not Kevin and Kevin, LLP, or Kevin Limited, or KVN Inc, and for sure not Kevin, Inc. because when I had asked 5 months ago to work on that company I was told, “Oh Budget’s no, hahaha, only Directors can work on Kevin, Inc. You have to work on Kevin, LLC, then Kevin Farms, then Kevin Holdings, LLP first, hahaha.”

Back in my cubicle, I look over my notes again. I know I can get Abe to see what’s at stake, I just need to explain it in terms that mean something to him. You see, Synergetic Tax Solutions (STS) has been marketing the STS Loan Circulation Wheel of Opportunity™, also known as Project Missile Defense™, also known as PMD, to its clients for years. STS lore is that it was Abe’s brainchild and this idea catapulted him to partner at age 28, youngest in STS history. Click-clack-click. The trouble is, when PMD was created, following the IRS Proposed Regs of 1995 it was fine and dandy. Like lime hard candy. But the Final Regs of 2024, published by the IRS just last month, and the nearly unanimous adoption of those same final regulations by all 50 states, made the current and only iteration of PMD highly illegal.

And so I started my own PMD, one that falls in step with the 2024 Final Regulations, but on average will lead to an increased tax burden of 25%, plus the requirement to file tax returns in four new states, but will let PMD stay alive, which has been a tax savings on average of 65% for our clients, so they will still see an effective tax savings of 56.25% (on average) compared to if they had not employed the PMD structure. If not lime hard candy, it’s at least a sweet cherry lozenge.

It’s a good plan, and one that I don’t have to kink my morals into a knot to execute and Mr. Dapper thinks so, too. He’s my business card holder. An antique bronze fox, standing butler straight on his hind legs, primly dressed in a tailed topcoat. My stack of cards ready for service in a tray held by his cuffed outstretched paws. I used my $67 gift card I received for my promotion to “Senior Accountant I” to buy it. If I can get Abe to agree to this, I might get promoted to “Senior Accountant II” or all the way to “Manager of Synergetic Solutions I.”

Order and monetary value go a long way with Abe, which means no more slapping desks in the name of ethics. A more calculated approach and an actual meeting will do the trick, so I zig through the cubicle farm and zag around the breakroom to Liddy’s desk to schedule a meeting for 3 o’clock that same afternoon. And grab a red pen—I broke mine in half sometime during the second dozen set of Kevin calls that morning.

Liddy was the greeting party, in her own way, on my first day. I walked through the doors of STS, wide-eyed and freshly pressed, and Liddy, behind her little half-wall, did not turn to face me, kept on clicking and clacking as she barely raised her voice to tell me training was in the large conference room, coffee and rolls on the table. The noises of her calculator had a pleasing rhythm, and I found myself humming along as I walked into the conference room, each click and clack keying themselves into my brain.

There were four of us new hires and we sat quietly, picking at our donuts, faces illuminated a robin’s egg blue from the projector screen that showed in fire engine-red letters, “What is Your Solution?” After 20 minutes of asking who was in tax or audit, the lead partner (the guy whose car I will metaphorically set ablaze in 18 months and is presumably named Abe after seeing his BMW with the license plate HNSTABE—although to this day, I cannot say if he has ever introduced himself), walked in, looked above each of our heads in turn, said “Welcome” before he clicked a key on the keyboard and grabbed the tray of the remaining donuts and left us alone to watch the 5-hour video that turned into STS material.

The video finished and a man came into the conference room with four small boxes. I remember him dressed in all black and white, like a butler outfit, but that surely wasn’t the case, placing one box in front of each of us, and leaving us with a haughty bow. I still haven’t seen that man again. We all knew what was in the boxes, but our hands still shook as we opened them. Off-white. Classic. Understated. Professional. We giggled in elation for a couple minutes, traded our business cards like Pokemon, then composed ourselves, smoothed our garments, left the conference room, and strutted down the hall towards the breakroom. We were all now “Accountant I’s.” Click-clack.

If asked later that day, perhaps over our lunch of energy bars and puffed wheat veggie crisps, what I had learned from our training video, I couldn’t have told you, but it was effective, nonetheless. Months later, in a stressful moment, I had perfect recall of the “Your Solution to Client Interactions” module. I met with Kevin, one of my first clients and whose individual tax return I would be preparing.

“Who are you? What happened to,” Kevin picked at his stubble, “uh, the other guy.” There was a distinct emphasis on that last word. “Doesn’t matter, but I’ll need to see your voting records for the past four elections. Federal, state, and county.” He leaned back in his rolling chair, the hinges squealing in protest, and drummed his fingers on his belly. I stared at him, at his fingers, at his belly. There was a low hum in my head, like an old computer starting up after years of storage. He clapped, bringing me back and laughed and laughed and laughed. “I’m kidding, that’s all. I’m sure you’re a good egg. Abe knows how to pick’em, am I right?” And he winked at me.

I had no clue who he was talking about or what Abe picks, but the wink set off a chain reaction. The humming stopped, my mind spun like tiny blue circle and a Word document opened in my head. I could read the prompts telling me exactly how to handle this situation: I laughed and nodded my head in agreement, then made a banal comment about some football team. Kevin initially looked confused, but we soon got down to business. Later, he paid his bill in full and on time. Clickity-clack-click-click.

And after that, I was called into Abe’s office. “Kevin called me up after your meeting with him the other day.” He sized me up with a frown as if I was a steak ordered medium-rare that came out extra crispy. “He had nothing but great things to say about you.” A smile greased over his face. “Looks like you’re starting to Get It.” He stood up, so I stood up, my chair scratching along the bamboo floor. His hand shot out briefly, but receded back into his pocket before I could shake it. “Congratulations, we are promoting you. Make sure you get something to take care of that,” he motioned at the scratched floor, “off the clock, of course.”

When I got home that night, I had a package waiting for me. I ripped into it and pulled out my new business cards. Five-hundred of them with my new title, “Accountant II.” Before bed, I slipped one underneath my pillow and smiled, counting Liddy’s clicks and clacks as I faded off to sleep.

At three o’clock exactly, Abe’s office door opens, slow-motion, like in a Dracula movie. That’s my cue. I walk into his office, take a seat across his desk. There is a stack of papers about an inch high next to him, other than that, it is spotless. The chair squeaks as I sit, which draws Abe’s attention. He glances at me, furrows his brow, hits a button on his phone, “Liddy?”

Clickity-clack-clackety-click. “Sir you have a 3pm with a subordinate.” Clackety-clack-clack-clack.

He nods, leans back in his chair, but his brow doesn’t relax. He regards the two inches above my head, “Ah Kevin, LLC?”

“Uh, yes, that is one of my clients, but—,”

“Kevin’s a good friend of mine. Nice chap. Says a lot of things. Never take any of it seriously, though. That’s part of Getting It around here.”

“That’s not why I’m here.” The sun moves out from behind a cloud and is shining through the window directly into my face, so I scoot my chair to the side and explain to him how the new final regs impact our PMD structures. He stops me with a raised palm and a smug smile, his brow finally relaxes. With his other hand, he taps on the stack of papers next to him.

“Memos,” he says. “To all our clients explaining how PMD is still sound. It outlines our ‘more likely than not’ position—that red tape nonsense—that PMD aligns with the 2024 Final Regs.”

I grab a handful of memos off the stack and glance through them. They’re not much more than ‘just trust us on this one,’ plus, they are all the same. “Shouldn’t these have…be a little more client specific?”

“No.”

I put the memos back and get back on track with my notes. I explain to him my new proposal on how to update PMD to comply with the new legislation. I explain how it is still a tax-savings to the client. I explain how the Excel file I created can be used to calculate each client’s new savings. I explain the Power Point I created and how we can roll this out to each client individually. I explain to him the risks of keeping everything status quo.

Abe leans forward in his chair. “Let me get this straight,” he says, his elbows now resting on his desk, his fingers steepling into each other. “We go to each client, tell them we, their trusted Synergized Tax Advisor, were wrong, and they owe MORE money?”

I nod, “Yes, it’s—,”

“No!” he says and points his finger as if I’m a dog trying to take a hot dog from his plate, except he’s pointing and looking at the spot where I was when I first sat down. Where the chair usually is. And keeps pointing, emphasizing each point he makes.

“They pay more taxes. We file more tax returns. How is this a win for anyone? Where is the Budget,” he bows his head low and with deliberate reverence crosses himself for four solid seconds. I sit still. “For all the extra work we have? How can we charge more fees to our clients when they are paying more in tax? How is that a Synergized Tax Solution?” At this, he takes a break, asking for a response from the wall.

“It’s the right thing to do,” I say, but his eyes still don’t track the sound and he continues looking at nothing.

“Do you know what a career limiting move is? It’s telling the client we messed up and they have to pay more taxes.”

“But what about the ethics of it?” I ask, keeping my hands tightly on my thighs. The phone rings and Abe motions for privacy. He picks up and stares out the window while I walk out behind him and back to my desk.

The next fifteen minutes or so are spent staring at a dark monitor, wondering where I went wrong, wondering if I’ll have a job this time tomorrow, but then one of the other partners, she’s not around much, been working tirelessly to bring R.H. Macy in as a client, drops a pamphlet onto my desk. Sounds like you need some REST, she tells me and almost looks at me, her eyes landing on the bun of hair at the top of my head. Looks like it, too, she says before she walks away. She’s gone before I can say anything and I slide the pamphlet into my bag without looking at it and go back to my blank monitor, but that’s when I notice something’s missing. Mr. Dapper’s tray is empty. My business cards are gone. Out of the corner of my eye, the pamphlet is glowing, pulsing light from my bag like a firefly.

Now that my new version of PMD has been stomped into the ground, I need to figure out how to recode all those hours in my timesheet. About 80 hours of work over the last month that was going to be allocated out to each client proportionally and meticulously logged in the prescribed STS Budget Training manner: TX-C-PL-GBL-KV.LLC/100/NE/OFC, or TX-C-RT-USA-KV.LLC/80/NE/WFH, etc., etc. Now those hours are down the drain, as if I never worked them. The sayings they taught us pop into my head, “Charge what you should, not what you could,” and “Budgets in-line are Budgets divine.” The last one is a bit misleading as anyone going over Budget meant they weren’t Getting It, and they were usually getting kicked out the door sooner rather than later. I leave the timesheet mess for another day and go outside to take a long walk.

I’m alone in the office when I get back, everyone’s gone home for dinner. But something else is wrong. The halls are quiet. Liddy’s click-clacks are gone and the silence in my head is rearranging my mind’s eye, from a Magic Eye poster full of S’ and T’s and $’s that are slowly dissolving, revealing something that I had forgotten all about since the first day I walked through the doors of STS.

I walk into Abe’s office and stand over his phone. Loud and clear I say, “Ethics.” The phone rings and I pick up. “Hello,” I say. There’s no one there.

It’s dark when I get home. I missed dinner, maybe lunch, too, but I’m not hungry. I grab the Ben & Jerry’s from the freezer and sit down at the kitchen table when my doorbell rings. He mumbles something about a package for me and hands me a small box and an envelope before he scurries away. I open the envelope first: my registration for Re-Synergizing Training (REST) in Bloomington, Illinois and a bus ticket. The start date is a week from yesterday. I let it fall to the floor while I take the box back to the kitchen table where I take a spoonful of ice cream from the carton. Opening the box, the lightbulb in the overhead light goes out. I remove the cards from the box and set the stack of 500 in front of me. My hand shakes as I use the blue light of my cell phone screen to read the “Accountant I” that is printed on every card. I push them aside and replace them with the ice cream. I eat slowly, steadily, staring at the black wall in front of me, tapping my fingers to Liddy’s…, no, it’s to the beat of some pop song I heard on the radio.

Then I see it, the light pulsing from my shoulder bag. I take the pamphlet out and just like I suspected, it’s for the REST program. I thumb through lazily, when a line jumps out to me, “you’ll be retrained with co-workers from all offices that are struggling to synergize their solutions, just like you.” Just like me, I think. I grab a notebook and a pen and start making notes on fraudulent timesheets and problematic clients and unethical transactions that are pushed down our throats. I get it all out, on the paper, so it’s ready to be shared next week. With people just like me. Scritchitty-scritch-scritch.

Filed Under: EAP: The Magazine, Summer 2025: Daylight Saving. Tagged With: accounting, being accountable, Justin Wacker

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In The News.

That cult classic pirate/sci fi mash up GREENBEARD, by Richard James Bentley, is now a rollicking audiobook, available from Audible.com. Narrated and acted by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio, you’ll be overwhelmed by the riches and hilarity within.

“Captain Sylvestre de Greybagges is your typical seventeenth-century Cambridge-educated lawyer turned Caribbean pirate, as comfortable debating the virtues of William Shakespeare, Isaac Newton, and compound interest as he is wielding a cutlass, needling archrival Henry Morgan, and parsing rum-soaked gossip for his next target. When a pepper monger’s loose tongue lets out a rumor about a fleet loaded with silver, the Captain sets sail only to find himself in a close encounter of a very different kind.

After escaping with his sanity barely intact and his beard transformed an alarming bright green, Greybagges rallies The Ark de Triomphe crew for a revenge-fueled, thrill-a-minute adventure to the ends of the earth and beyond.

This frolicsome tale of skullduggery, jiggery-pokery, and chicanery upon Ye High Seas is brimming with hilarious puns, masterful historical allusions, and nonstop literary hijinks. Including sly references to Thomas Pynchon, Treasure Island, 1940s cinema, and notable historical figures, this mélange of delights will captivate readers with its rollicking adventure, rich descriptions of food and fashion, and learned asides into scientific, philosophical, and colonial history.”

THE SUPERGIRLS is back, revised and updated!

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In The News.

Newport Public Library hosted a three part Zoom series on Visionary Fiction, led by Tod.  

And we love them for it, too.

The first discussion was a lively blast. You can watch it here. The second, Looking Back to Look Forward can be seen here.

The third was the best of all. Visions of the Future, with a cast of characters including poets, audiobook artists, historians, Starhawk, and Mary Shelley. Among others. Link is here.

In the News.

SNOTTY SAVES THE DAY is now an audiobook, narrated by Last Word Audio’s mellifluous Colby Elliott. It launched May 10th, but for a limited time, you can listen for free with an Audible trial membership. So what are you waiting for? Start listening to the wonders of how Arcadia was born from the worst section of the worst neighborhood in the worst empire of all the worlds since the universe began.

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If you love audio books, don’t miss the new release of REPORT TO MEGALOPOLIS, by Tod Davies, narrated by Colby Elliott of Last Word Audio. The tortured Aspern Grayling tries to rise above the truth of his own story, fighting with reality every step of the way, and Colby’s voice is the perfect match for our modern day Dr. Frankenstein.

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Mike Madrid dishes on Miss Fury to the BBC . . .

Tod on the Importance of Visionary Fiction

Check out this video of “Beyond Utopia: The Importance of Fantasy,” Tod’s recent talk at the tenth World-Ecology Research Network Conference, June 2019, in San Francisco. She covers everything from Wind in the Willows to the work of Kim Stanley Robinson, with a look at The History of Arcadia along the way. As usual, she’s going on about how visionary fiction has an important place in the formation of a world we want and need to have.

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