My parents never pressured me about what to study in college. While some of my friends were steered into business degrees they despised, I was free to float through the liberal arts, unbothered and deeply unconcerned with my future tax bracket. They panicked over statistics and tax law while I headed off to see what fresh disaster Don Quixote had engineered. I offered sympathetic pats as they memorized depreciation schedules, unaware that two bachelor’s degrees and a master’s later, I would be here with the education equivalent of a participation trophy, while a stack of business receipts smirk at me.
I recently contacted my accountant with a tax question pertaining to my small business, Low Country Shrimp and Knits. Instead of helpful advice, he began lecturing me about my terrible accounting practices which, apparently foolishly, I assumed I was paying him to do.
He started throwing acronyms at me like an angry Scrabble player. “Tracy, you don’t have the COGS in the EBITDA in the PDQ so I can’t XYZ.” Meanwhile, I’m over here still trying to decipher COGS.
Costs Obviously Got Stupid? Crying Over Google Sheets? Confused Owner Guessing and Swearing? I was being verbally slapped with a 1099 or a K-9 or something businessy that I would have been madder about if I had any clue what he was saying. One thing was clear — I needed to complete a crash course in becoming a tax expert since the CPA I hired apparently couldn’t be bothered.
Now, if you haven’t ticked-and-tied eleventy million expenses with nothing but the misplaced confidence of someone who once passed a medieval literature exam and assumed that skill would transfer, I highly recommend it. Because it is even more fun than it sounds.
Every waking hour over the last few weeks has been spent trying to figure out who charged me what, to pay for huh, and where to put it. One example: I have three separate emails from the same company, sent within minutes of each other, all for the same thing, all with different totals. Why are there three documents? Why are the numbers all different? And where do I put them?
Apparently, I am supposed to put them in my T. Which, frankly, I find rude.
I ordered some accounting books, which I guess I must read in order to learn from - which feels unnecessary and gives off strong gym-membership vibes. I was hoping the principles of accounting would seep into my brain through osmosis or some other yet-to-be-deciphered accounting acronym. I have important questions that the books do not answer like how do I file the crate of wine I need to complete this process with an iota of sanity intact? Is it an asset until I drink the wine and then it’s an expense? And also, stop talking about my assets. It’s making me uncomfortable in my workplace.
And then there are the buckets. So. Many Buckets. Why are we putting expenses in buckets - are we living in the Holy Roman Empire?
It was around this time that I discovered that debits and credits are not, in fact, the same thing as debit cards and credit cards, which feels like a personal attack by the accounting profession. Debit and credit cards are about how you pay. Debits and credits are about how money moves in the books, and they share names purely to cause confusion and emotional damage. In accounting, a debit doesn’t mean money leaving and a credit doesn’t mean money arriving. They simply mean “left side” and “right side,” which is wildly unhelpful and obviously created by Caligula for tracking torture and taxes. Hence everything being set up in a T.
“You paying taxes? Put your coins in that bucket on the right. You can’t pay? Torture it is. Augustus will relieve you of your hand and put it in the bucket on the left. When the buckets weigh the same, we will drink out of the skulls of our enemies.”
So yes, my entire life has been a lie. Not in a big, cinematic way, but in a slow, humiliating way that involves spreadsheets and ancient sociopaths.
My Spanish and Journalism degrees have paid off because I can confidently write a compelling short story to the IRS about the time I unintentionally almost committed tax fraud and then translate it for my overseas investors. My accountant and I will get a good laugh over it, because he is obviously not busy working on my returns. We will celebrate with a magnum of Veuve which we drink out of a bucket, because financial people know how to party.
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Tracy Winslow now owns four books about accounting, which clearly makes her a CPA - Constantly Panicking Adult. While she is not available to help with your tax returns, she is skilled at choosing buckets and then filling them with things. Especially yarn because Low Country Shrimp and Knits is always overflowing with the best fibers and lacking square footage. Come start a new hobby that has WAY BETTER acronyms like kfb which has nothing to do with Kicking Financial Buckets or something weird like that. Check out all the classes and events at shrimpandknits.com