If only I had noticed the stickers on the door of the service station before pumping my gas:
Don’t Like My American Flag?
Call 1-800-EAT-SHIT
Don’t Like My American Flag?
Call 1-800-LEAVE THE USA
I have to say it was because of both the actual views and the expression of them on the front door of a business that sent me inwardly screaming from the place. And seeing a political sticker on a company vehicle is disheartening as well.
I did, but he too has moved to a “highly inconvenient location.” The federal penitentiary . . . for income tax evasion.
He did taxes for my in-laws and handled ours for a couple of years. Found all sorts of deductions we’d never known of before and though he charged us $400 he’d save us 5 to 6K a year. The guy absolutely loved to fornicate with the IRS, especially in court.
After he went to the slammer I did our taxes for one year. It had always taken me about 3 to 4 hours before and I figured I’d just follow his template and whip them out. A full 14 hours later and mentally bludgeoned beyond belief, I finished. He’d intentionally made them complicated beyond belief, creating his own forms instead of using the IRS’s, cross-referencing, itemizing ad nauseum, etc.
I have a great accountant now. Turbo Tax. It’s easy and correctional facility free.
(I’m not even going to start on how the in-law’s records and those of dozens of other ranchers in their area were just left by this guy in a storage facility, abandoned or how he stiffed the Brown Palace for his daughter’s wedding. Brilliant guy, now bagging groceries. I kid you not.)
My old tax preparer was, if anything, even more anti-Arab than** Eve**'s. I didn’t suspect a thing until I got the following letter:
Greetings.
There are some changes in your tax liability for MDCCCCLXXXXVIII. Schedule XLIV, your estimated tax, calculated on a basis of, oh, about IV unciae,
according to section MMDCII of Chapter LXI of Title XXVII of the Code, now provides for the deduction of home-repair expenses up to an amount of DLXIII per MMDCL in property taxes paid over the past year, providing you have owned your current home for at least IIII years. We’d be better able to take advantage of this if we could use decimal points, but we’re pretty sure it works in your favor.
Anyhow, based on your III children under the age of XII, and your custodial support of a relative more than LXXV years old, your personal deductions are higher than ever. Based on this, we determine your tax liability, the amount you must pay by April XV, to be MDCCCLXVII pounds of salt.
I’ll be going on vacation next week, beginning on the XXIVth. I’ll send you a postcard from Minnesota, land of…of…a whole lotta lakes.
Sincerely,
Ted
I feel a sudden strong urge to go hug my tax guy. He’ll call me up around the first of February and say, “Hey swamps, you ready to get your taxes done yet?” If I have everything together by then I say, “Sure!” He says, “Wanna come in on such and such date and time?” I say, “Sure!” I go in, we spend a half hour to forty five minutes going over my taxes and I leave. A couple days later he calls to say they’re done, I go back hand him a check and I get my taxes to mail off. This year I may even go for broke and ask him to file em electronically for me. He’s worth every penny of it.
There is a radio commercial where I’m at for a service industry, I think it’s cleaning or something like that, and they say that they don’t employ any liberals. I thought I heard it wrong, but I’ve since heard it a few times and they indeed say that. I thought that was rather unprofessional, especially considering my area is rather left leaning.
Even if he did illegal things on your behalf it’s against the integrity of the acounting profession to reveal priviledged information.
That’s why if say an internal accountant and Enron went public about Enron’s scandals they should never be allowed to perform as an accountant again, they violated a very basic professional understanding that accountants have.
I actually rather like that. Are you sure it was anti-Arab? Seems to me more like a fun riff on Roman numerals. Or am I being wooshed?
Our current numbering system uses Arabic numerals (which includes 0! Woo!).
Actually, it’s more as if I whooshed myself. I was aiming for a joke about an accountant so vehemently anti-Arab he refused to use Arabic numerals, which forced him into the Roman system (because I was too lazy to look for ways to reproduce other systems which I don’t know anyway), which, because it has no place-values, rendered decimals obsolete. The result, I expected, would be untrammeled hilarity (as we all know, lack of decimal notation is the foundation and the soul of comedy, right up there with the pratfall, the mother-in-law joke, and the custard pie). I was also going to recycle one of my old “hey, what happened to all the zeroes” routines that always had 'em rolling in the aisles, but decided to save that for the follow-up.
So you weren’t whooshed. I saw a gag hanging there, grabbed for it and missed, that’s all.
Don’t feel bad King, I got it. Chuckled even. 
Of course it would. Man, there’s nothing less attractive than seeing Lib build his little strawmen so that he can play martyr.
Actually, I thought it was quite funny. 
It is no wonder that your calibre has left you.
The man works for you. Tell him to keep his opinions to himself and resume your business relationship. I feel certain he will comply.
I’m sure he has. I specifically did not say what in his letter upset me, because I wanted him to know that many of his religious and political views did not belong in his yearly newsletter–how does he know I’m not Muslim?
So, OK, I will write a nice, polite letter telling him that I am an atheist Democrat, and that I really don’t feel comfortable with him pushing his Christian, Republican views on me in a newsletter. I didn’t care what his religious or political stances were till he forced them on me.
Eve: So, OK, I will write a nice, polite letter telling him that I am an atheist Democrat, and that I really don’t feel comfortable with him pushing his Christian, Republican views on me in a newsletter.
No, don’t. Then he’ll just write you off as one of “those bigoted God-hating atheist Democrats”. Just continue telling him that discussions of religion and politics have no place in a professional’s business-related newsletter. (Your “in mixed company” crack was funny, but I think it went over his head.)
Professional people should not be wasting their business associates’ time with discussions of such touchy issues as religion and politics, no matter what the personal beliefs of either party happen to be. That is what you need to get across to this concrete-skulled pencil pusher, and I wish you luck.
And another thing: IMO you should avoid getting into any kind of “open dialogue” with this guy about your own views. What with
putting inflammatory remarks into his newsletter,
rejecting the idea that his remarks represent his opinions rather than indisputable facts,
suggesting that it doesn’t matter because they won’t change anybody else’s opinions, and
asking you to discuss it with him more fully,
the guy sounds like a congenital Tease Troll. He’s spoiling for an argument, even at the risk of pissing off further an already-pissed-off customer. (Apparently his past experiences in pissing off the people who later wrote him anonymous letters haven’t taught him anything.) Yeah, he’d love to know “exactly what seems to have upset you” so he could get another chance to argue. He’s probably desperate because none of his own family or friends will argue these issues with him any more, but that doesn’t mean you have to be the enabler.
Don’t give him the satisfaction. Freeze the guy out with the reiteration of the only important issue here, namely that professionals don’t mix business with religion and politics.
(A thought: could this guy possibly be december? ;))
Goddamit, the hamsters ate my nice long answer. Short version: I agree with Kimstu and will try to draft a pertinent letter. I no longer have his original (I sent it back to him), so I can’t get into specifics anyway.
Hmmm, *me *standing up against anti-Muslim bigotry!