Humor in taxation? You bet.....

As a tax practicioner, I sometimes think that I should be cross-trained in several other disciplines. People seem to think that because they are coming to me with their most personal issue - their finances - I should also be privy to other aspects of their personal lives.

In addition to my "normal" role as tax advisor, I have been a counselor, a mentor, a private investigator, and several other things to my clients. Today I want to share some of what I think are my more humorous stories:

Fun With Receipts

Everyone knows that you have to keep receipts to back up your expenses if you get audited. Here are some times that I wish the client hadn't:

-I had a farmer client who was infamous for bringing in some of the filthiest receipts I have ever seen. I used to want to cover my desk with plastic when I worked on his return. Grease, dirt, fertilizer - you name it, it was all over his receipts. The last straw was one year when I opened his envelope and a large cockroach scampered out of his paperwork and across my desk. From that point on, I just requested a summary of his receipts...

-Another client of mine wanted to write off medical expenses, so she included all of her medical receipts in her paperwork. As I was adding up the receipts, I kept seeing the drug name famciclovir. I eventually got curious, so I looked it up - and wished I hadn't. As it turns out, famciclovir is a drug used to treat herpes! I ended up feeling like I knew way too much about this particular client.

-I had a client from the next town over who was a nice little old man. Each year, this 85-year old man would present me with a generous mix of viagra receipts (sometimes ten per month) along with his blood pressure and arthritis medications. This continued up until he passed away some years ago.

Can I Write This Off?

It's truly amazing what some people will tell you if they think it will get them a tax break:

-Nothing comes close to the client who asked me if lunch trips to the strip club were business expenses as long as he talked business with the dancers. It wouldn't have been so funny if it weren't for the fact that his wife was sitting right next to him and didn't know about these trips. I think that might have been a long car ride home for him...

-The most awkward appointments in my career tend to be the ones where the client asks about elective cosmetic surgeries and whether they are deductible (they're generally not). I tend to spend the rest of the appointment wondering what they have had "done." The most uncomfortable experience of my career was when I met with the woman who proudly told me about her enhancements and then asked my opinion on them!

Prove it!

I don't think there is anything people hate more than dealing with the IRS. You've heard stories about how people sign their returns in blood before sending them in, but here are some true stories from my practice that go above and beyond:

-The IRS audited a client of mine who bred rabbits. There had been a plague of some sort that killed a large portion of his stock, so he had a large loss on his return. The IRS audited the return, demanding proof of his losses. I can't verify whether it's true, but he told me that he stuffed four dead rabbits in a box and mailed it to the IRS as proof of his losses! It's not how I would have handled it, but he did get a "no change" audit.

-Another client who traveled extensively received a notice from the IRS that his travel expenses were being audited. He made sure to provide all of the appropriate receipts, but since his travel was international, most of them were in foreign languages!

....and the coup de grace

Finally, this story isn't mine but I have to pass it along. A fellow preparer tried unsuccessfully to e-file a client's return, but it was rejected due to a mismatch in the date of birth of one of her children. The client swore up and down that there must have been something wrong with the computers. She sheepishly called back a couple of days later and admitted that she had the child's birthday wrong - and that she had been wrong about it since he was born! The child was 10 years old and had been celebrating the wrong birthday since day one...


--Dan Musick is the Tax Services Partner for Cook & Associates, a full service accounting firm with offices located in San Marcos and San Antonio, TX