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I started off at Wits University (Johannesburg, South Africa) aiming for a BCom Accounting, the path towards being a Chartered Accountant. It definitely was the

I started off at Wits University (Johannesburg, South Africa) aiming for a BCom Accounting, the path towards being a Chartered Accountant. It definitely was the path towards gold. (And access to cutting edge technology, I remember a friend of mine showing me his new portable computer - in 1993ish, two black padded canvas bags, one containing an all-in-one Mac, the other a portable printer. It was the first time I saw a Mac.) I was quickly disillusioned by the field, from high school days Accounting was something that appealed to my asperger-like tendencies - a mathematical model of a business, a true answer to the health of the business. But in a university level it rapidly devolved into picking apart legal statute to find ways of tax avoidance. A game to hide as many debits into pseudo-equities like "Goodwill". That appalled me. I know tax avoidance is legal, but it conflicts with what I believe to be fair and acceptable. That only worsened when I started job interviewing with accounting firms, including Arthur Andersen. When I see debacles like WorldCom and Enron, I'm not really surprised. And now, tax avoidance schemes like the Double Irish, and the Dutch Sandwich, I'm thankful I am not in that profession.

wolfgke 12y ago
> But in a university level it rapidly devolved into picking apart legal statute to find ways of tax avoidance. A game to hide as many debits into pseudo-equities like "Goodwill". That appalled me. I know tax avoidance is legal, but it conflicts with what I believe to be fair and acceptable. That only worsened when I started job interviewing with accounting firms, including Arthur Andersen. Why don't you use your skill to develop a taxation system for which you can formally prove that you can't do such sketchy tricks for tax avoidance? A kind of dual (in the sense of mathematical optimization) to accounting: If accounting is (among other things - of course) about finding dirty tricks in the taxation system for tax avoiding, co-accounting shall be about developing taxation systems where it shall be (formally provable) impossible to apply dirty tricks for tax avoidance.

wolfgke 12y ago

> But in a university level it rapidly devolved into picking apart legal statute to find ways of tax avoidance. A game to hide as many debits into pseudo-equities like "Goodwill". That appalled me. I know tax avoidance is legal, but it conflicts with what I believe to be fair and acceptable. That only worsened when I started job interviewing with accounting firms, including Arthur Andersen. Why don't you use your skill to develop a taxation system for which you can formally prove that you can't do such sketchy tricks for tax avoidance? A kind of dual (in the sense of mathematical optimization) to accounting: If accounting is (among other things - of course) about finding dirty tricks in the taxation system for tax avoiding, co-accounting shall be about developing taxation systems where it shall be (formally provable) impossible to apply dirty tricks for tax avoidance.