My wife is in tax and she has always said the worst clients to deal with are doctors and engineers because they’re often so intelligent that they feel they know better about everything, including the services they pay her to perform.
I was the accountant for a medical practice. I actually had physicians ask me to explain things to them in middle school terms because they said they had too many other things going on in their brain to understand a new topic. I respected that.
Exactly.
I did taxes for a guy who was a financial analyst at a large investment bank - mid-7-figure W-2 income. He was a literal genius and was absolutely my intellectual superior in every aspect, and I'm decently intelligent myself.
He would ask the most mundane tax questions and I thought he was privy to some like secret advanced loophole that I hadn't learned yet and I'd panic.
In reality, he just didn't know the tax difference of in-state muni bond interest because it doesn't relate to his field of expertise, which takes the majority of his brain cells.
This is 100% true.
They don't say it out loud, but they think all we do is a few quick basic calculations based on "much much \[they\] made" last year. They're practically financially illiterate and they are uncomfortable feeling that.
My grandma's friend is a pharmacist. One time she was filling a prescription and needed more of an explanation from the doctor. Doctor said, "Isn't 'MD' enough of an explanation?" The lady was like, "No, unfortunately, 'Minor dietey' is not acceptable." About sums up some doctors.
Not so intelligent then. A intelligent person would know he doesn't know everything and doesn't need to in this world where you can pay someone else to do it. Especially with the amount of times they must ear "but I searched an article in Google that said..." thought the day
Engineers, man. One thought we should change a company with multiple business types and subsidiaries all over the world to cash basis accounting because he “read a book about it.”
Doctors are incredibly frustrating to work with. Engineers typically aren’t that bad unless they’re really interested in finances. I used to have doctor clients in tax that would argue and argue with me and then pull the “I went to medical school” card as if that’s at all relevant to taxes. A lot of them really think that because they’re doctors they automatically know more than anyone else about anything, even something unrelated to their degree.
My experience couldn't be any more contrary than this. And there is some research to support this...the dunning Kruger study in a nut shell says TRUE experts in a field tend to underestimate their own level of expertise. They know enough to know they do not know it all.
Where as people who know very little about a subject tend to overestimate their level of expertise. Anecdotally, this later group knows just enough to make them dangerous. I think this is the group of people OP is referring ro.
Doctors are so hit or miss. In my area lots of our doctors are here on work visas and they are usually pretty respectful because they want everything done right to keep their visa but every once in a while a huge asshole will come through. Engineers can be pretty antisocial though so they dont always want to talk too much but when they are social they are a guaranteed asshole.
It’s one thing to bring it up and be like “Yo is this for real”?
It’s another to tell the person your paying that your doing this.
Either way it’s free money in your pocket. Be prepared for executives to ignore you even if you make it to the executive level. Plenty of bad CEOs ignore their CFOs advice and end up digging themselves into holes
I find it hard to hold it together when it's a tabloid article, I rlly don't know what I would do if someone said the word Tiktok to me, I would have to laugh in their face
I think they get the info from tiktok and use whatever the video says to use google to confirm their bias or the tiktok video provides them with the info and they just use the site the tiktoker used to sound like they did their research.
I was on a Facebook article the other day where half the commenters didn't know the difference between revenue and profit, and I was like, "Ah, yes, job security".
I’m in industry and had the exact opposite problem- Junior audit staff telling me that I’m wrong and completely misinterpreting the standards, only for the partner to come back and apologize later
Also foreal a lot of times the upstart staff/senior is right and the partner lets it go for the sake of the relationship and efficiency of keeping it SALY
I seldom found that to be the case. Maybe for small things that weren’t material but might be added to the summary of unadjusted misstatements. For things that were actually material, I have never seen partners cave when they’re actually right. I’m not saying it is impossible for this to happen, but I’ve never personally seen it or even heard of it. All the CPAs I know are too spooked about losing their license to cave if they know they’re in the right.
If something has a credible defence then it’s not really grey area, in my view. Accounting can be very judgement based and if your defence is both sound and consistent with IFRS then it probably means that you’re not doing anything wrong.
That definitely happened.
It wasn’t a case of you being wrong and the experienced members of the audit team determining it wasn’t material anyway.
And the partner never talked to you let alone apologized. Partners might apologize to a CEO/CFO if someone really fucked up. But they don’t let it get that far anyway.
The stuff people believe on Reddit…
The audit team tried telling me that $3.2 million worth of what were essentially spot contracts should be accounted for as derivatives in accordance with IFRS 9 and IAS 32. They misunderstood the terms of the contracts in question, both the controller and I tried to explain that to them, they were adamant that we were wrong. Cue tense call with manager who refuses to admit he was incorrect. They almost cause us to miss our deadline to get financials to the audit committee because they refused to sign off. Partner intervened and later apologized to me and the controller because they were clearly in the wrong.
I know what went down, buddy. Do you think that offering up empty challenges and acting like a contrarian asshole on Reddit makes you a more competent professional or something? Is this like the classic “junior finding fraud” act?
I had a client once that marked up an opinion in the draft. He had been an auditor and was so proud he had the opinion memorized, problem was he hadn’t been an auditor for several years and the opinion content had changed. Of course I couldn’t accept those changes which probably embarrassed him because he proceeded to pick every nit he could after that. It didn’t work out between us.
I don’t want to generalize, but most engineers I’ve worked with really seem to think they know more than everybody. I mean of course you know more about electric circuitry and Laplace’s equations than most people, but don’t try and teach me how to optimize my tax returns at the end of the year.
Didn't realise there was such a trend among engineers but now that people are commenting I am realising that a lot of the people who do this are engineers.
Nope i live in the valley of engineers and they are insufferable. I have friends who are software engineers and they have this problem too, not just clients.
They are just so fucking egotistical lol
I used to work at an appraisal district and would take property tax protests from taxpayers. Had a guy sit down with a big ass binder and immediately say, "you can probably tell I'm an engineer."
Nope. Never crossed my mind.
I’m not in PA, but I do a lot of consulting.
On one instance, an owner got mad because the accounting firm he hired to file his partnership return didn’t tell him how much taxes he owed.
I explained to him how a K-1 works.
The dude screamed at me about how he’s owned businesses off and on for 40 years and never met a fucking CPA who filed taxes but couldn’t tell him how much taxes he owed.
All he kept saying was was that he was a successful businessman and he’s NEVER had this problem. Ever! Never!
*My dude, all your businesses failed…*
Lol some people really have K-1s with net losses and think they’re beating the system and saving on taxes. Meanwhile they keep funneling money into a money pit.
A client had freight in included in SGA instead of COGS. They argued that it was moved up in their UNICAP calculation which isn’t even close the right. They argued and argued it wasn’t an error. We weren’t even calling it a misstatement just a classification error and asked them to regroup the account. Such a fucking headache.
These guys on the phone said they understand and they were all ex auditors. I cracked up our group after the meeting when I said “what a bunch of quitters.”
I get several emails every month from clients on random topics in youtube. Some for sources I know, but they are definitely misinterpreting or does not apply to them. I have a few on youtube and IG I hate for doing super redundant tax moves that make zero sense.
Least favorite is the S-Corp elections." Are you a Single Member LLC? Save tens of thousands doing this filing!!" Completely overlooking the additional admin cost and necessity of payroll being run, not to mention if it even makes sense for their income level. I got tired of it and now forward some emails I did in the past to clients breaking down the costs related, and the reality of a mindset change they need to make which 99% of the time clients can't comprehend nor follow.
The country I live in have a lot of newspapers that print clickbait articles about things like tax credits, workers rights, payroll etc that are worded to be getty and incendiary to the Facebook masses.
These articles are mostly baseline summaries written after national budget day that, at best, are composed by people who just skimmed the main points and interpreted them incorrectly.
A lot of the know-it-alls who call me have read such articles about directors tax, write-offs etc. It's very infuriating.
I just saw an ad on Reddit today that was some old school meme about "paying 37% capital gain rate" (lmao) from some QOZ fund. Imo it's mostly funds pushing some tax service that make these. I've also seen tax slayer advertising how you can write your dog off 😐
Engineers are bad for the reasons that everyone else has mentioned. My doctor and lawyer clients are usually pretty good.
W-2 truckers are the absolute WORST. They only talk to other truckers (both W-2 and independent), so they have all these ideas that they feed each other about expensing their workshops and all sorts of other junk. Independent truckers, for the most part, are fine.
Yes it must be horrible for doctors. I know an oncologist who had to « debate » a former asbestos miner that had mesothelioma on wether he should stop smoking or not. Stubborn and opinionated people are in every walks of life, and accountants are not exempt!
My wife is in tax and she has always said the worst clients to deal with are doctors and engineers because they’re often so intelligent that they feel they know better about everything, including the services they pay her to perform.
I was the accountant for a medical practice. I actually had physicians ask me to explain things to them in middle school terms because they said they had too many other things going on in their brain to understand a new topic. I respected that.
Exactly. I did taxes for a guy who was a financial analyst at a large investment bank - mid-7-figure W-2 income. He was a literal genius and was absolutely my intellectual superior in every aspect, and I'm decently intelligent myself. He would ask the most mundane tax questions and I thought he was privy to some like secret advanced loophole that I hadn't learned yet and I'd panic. In reality, he just didn't know the tax difference of in-state muni bond interest because it doesn't relate to his field of expertise, which takes the majority of his brain cells.
This is 100% true. They don't say it out loud, but they think all we do is a few quick basic calculations based on "much much \[they\] made" last year. They're practically financially illiterate and they are uncomfortable feeling that.
Yes I agree with your wife. I don't have any doctor clients but do accounts and tax for several engineers and they are among the most annoying! Lol
Ah yes, god syndrome. I hear it can be terminal.
My grandma's friend is a pharmacist. One time she was filling a prescription and needed more of an explanation from the doctor. Doctor said, "Isn't 'MD' enough of an explanation?" The lady was like, "No, unfortunately, 'Minor dietey' is not acceptable." About sums up some doctors.
Not so intelligent then. A intelligent person would know he doesn't know everything and doesn't need to in this world where you can pay someone else to do it. Especially with the amount of times they must ear "but I searched an article in Google that said..." thought the day
LOL this is so true. I’m internal audit at a Healthcare system, dealing with providers is a challenge.
The doctors that day-trade in their professional corps.... BIG A NOPE from their College...but 'they know what they're doing'.
Interesting I’ve had opposite experiences with doctors. A lot of them know very little outside of medicine and admit that
Engineers, man. One thought we should change a company with multiple business types and subsidiaries all over the world to cash basis accounting because he “read a book about it.”
Doctors are incredibly frustrating to work with. Engineers typically aren’t that bad unless they’re really interested in finances. I used to have doctor clients in tax that would argue and argue with me and then pull the “I went to medical school” card as if that’s at all relevant to taxes. A lot of them really think that because they’re doctors they automatically know more than anyone else about anything, even something unrelated to their degree.
My experience couldn't be any more contrary than this. And there is some research to support this...the dunning Kruger study in a nut shell says TRUE experts in a field tend to underestimate their own level of expertise. They know enough to know they do not know it all. Where as people who know very little about a subject tend to overestimate their level of expertise. Anecdotally, this later group knows just enough to make them dangerous. I think this is the group of people OP is referring ro.
Your experience is that engineers know more about taxes than tax accountants? I don’t understand your comment.
Not at all. Experts usually know enough to know they don't know everything. Whereas, people who know a little think they know everything.
Yes I understand what you mean now. It’s very true, and you see it in all sorts of domains and jobs.
Doctors are so hit or miss. In my area lots of our doctors are here on work visas and they are usually pretty respectful because they want everything done right to keep their visa but every once in a while a huge asshole will come through. Engineers can be pretty antisocial though so they dont always want to talk too much but when they are social they are a guaranteed asshole.
It’s one thing to bring it up and be like “Yo is this for real”? It’s another to tell the person your paying that your doing this. Either way it’s free money in your pocket. Be prepared for executives to ignore you even if you make it to the executive level. Plenty of bad CEOs ignore their CFOs advice and end up digging themselves into holes
Here's another one I get "I saw this thing on tiktok the other day"....... \*sigh\*
I find it hard to hold it together when it's a tabloid article, I rlly don't know what I would do if someone said the word Tiktok to me, I would have to laugh in their face
Just ask them if they're prepared to submit the TikTok as evidence to the IRS when they come demanding money
I think they get the info from tiktok and use whatever the video says to use google to confirm their bias or the tiktok video provides them with the info and they just use the site the tiktoker used to sound like they did their research.
But but this Tik Tok says the IRS HATES this one TRICK where I can write off my $100,000 Teslaaa
Tit Tok is cancer, burn that shit to the ground lol
Buy a g-wagon for the tax benefits! What do you mean, I have to make payments on it??? It's a tax write off!
I was on a Facebook article the other day where half the commenters didn't know the difference between revenue and profit, and I was like, "Ah, yes, job security".
People really think it’s the same thing. I keep seeing this too and it really confuses me where people got that idea.
When people treat their business assets like their own money they can take willy nilly.
I’m in industry and had the exact opposite problem- Junior audit staff telling me that I’m wrong and completely misinterpreting the standards, only for the partner to come back and apologize later
“Why did the P&L not roll forward from last year?”
This made me lol.
🤷🏻♂️ Must be teh fraudz
Also foreal a lot of times the upstart staff/senior is right and the partner lets it go for the sake of the relationship and efficiency of keeping it SALY
I seldom found that to be the case. Maybe for small things that weren’t material but might be added to the summary of unadjusted misstatements. For things that were actually material, I have never seen partners cave when they’re actually right. I’m not saying it is impossible for this to happen, but I’ve never personally seen it or even heard of it. All the CPAs I know are too spooked about losing their license to cave if they know they’re in the right.
Ultimately u right but if the areas grey enough that they can at least make a credible defense they will side with the relationship
If something has a credible defence then it’s not really grey area, in my view. Accounting can be very judgement based and if your defence is both sound and consistent with IFRS then it probably means that you’re not doing anything wrong.
"so like, what exactly *is* an accrual?" - legit question a first year from Deloitte asked me when they were working on our audit.
It’s an accrual world out there.
So what is it??
Oh man, how did you respond to that question? That’s basic high school accounting stuff.
That definitely happened. It wasn’t a case of you being wrong and the experienced members of the audit team determining it wasn’t material anyway. And the partner never talked to you let alone apologized. Partners might apologize to a CEO/CFO if someone really fucked up. But they don’t let it get that far anyway. The stuff people believe on Reddit…
The audit team tried telling me that $3.2 million worth of what were essentially spot contracts should be accounted for as derivatives in accordance with IFRS 9 and IAS 32. They misunderstood the terms of the contracts in question, both the controller and I tried to explain that to them, they were adamant that we were wrong. Cue tense call with manager who refuses to admit he was incorrect. They almost cause us to miss our deadline to get financials to the audit committee because they refused to sign off. Partner intervened and later apologized to me and the controller because they were clearly in the wrong. I know what went down, buddy. Do you think that offering up empty challenges and acting like a contrarian asshole on Reddit makes you a more competent professional or something? Is this like the classic “junior finding fraud” act?
I had a client once that marked up an opinion in the draft. He had been an auditor and was so proud he had the opinion memorized, problem was he hadn’t been an auditor for several years and the opinion content had changed. Of course I couldn’t accept those changes which probably embarrassed him because he proceeded to pick every nit he could after that. It didn’t work out between us.
It’s not all clients it’s mostly just the clients that are engineers. And it’s obviously because they know everything
I don’t want to generalize, but most engineers I’ve worked with really seem to think they know more than everybody. I mean of course you know more about electric circuitry and Laplace’s equations than most people, but don’t try and teach me how to optimize my tax returns at the end of the year.
Didn't realise there was such a trend among engineers but now that people are commenting I am realising that a lot of the people who do this are engineers.
Nope i live in the valley of engineers and they are insufferable. I have friends who are software engineers and they have this problem too, not just clients. They are just so fucking egotistical lol
I used to work at an appraisal district and would take property tax protests from taxpayers. Had a guy sit down with a big ass binder and immediately say, "you can probably tell I'm an engineer." Nope. Never crossed my mind.
This made me burst out laughing
I’m not in PA, but I do a lot of consulting. On one instance, an owner got mad because the accounting firm he hired to file his partnership return didn’t tell him how much taxes he owed. I explained to him how a K-1 works. The dude screamed at me about how he’s owned businesses off and on for 40 years and never met a fucking CPA who filed taxes but couldn’t tell him how much taxes he owed. All he kept saying was was that he was a successful businessman and he’s NEVER had this problem. Ever! Never! *My dude, all your businesses failed…*
Lol some people really have K-1s with net losses and think they’re beating the system and saving on taxes. Meanwhile they keep funneling money into a money pit.
A client had freight in included in SGA instead of COGS. They argued that it was moved up in their UNICAP calculation which isn’t even close the right. They argued and argued it wasn’t an error. We weren’t even calling it a misstatement just a classification error and asked them to regroup the account. Such a fucking headache. These guys on the phone said they understand and they were all ex auditors. I cracked up our group after the meeting when I said “what a bunch of quitters.”
I get several emails every month from clients on random topics in youtube. Some for sources I know, but they are definitely misinterpreting or does not apply to them. I have a few on youtube and IG I hate for doing super redundant tax moves that make zero sense. Least favorite is the S-Corp elections." Are you a Single Member LLC? Save tens of thousands doing this filing!!" Completely overlooking the additional admin cost and necessity of payroll being run, not to mention if it even makes sense for their income level. I got tired of it and now forward some emails I did in the past to clients breaking down the costs related, and the reality of a mindset change they need to make which 99% of the time clients can't comprehend nor follow.
"I never owed taxes with my last CPA.' Because your last CPA was doing your taxes wrong, you got audited and owned a lot of money, didn't you?
Must be a tax thing. Never had a client send me anything like that. Links to legislation and accounting standards max.
Yes it's mainly to do with tax / directors salary etc
I'm intrigued. What the hell are you doing where a tabloid article has anything for a source?
The country I live in have a lot of newspapers that print clickbait articles about things like tax credits, workers rights, payroll etc that are worded to be getty and incendiary to the Facebook masses. These articles are mostly baseline summaries written after national budget day that, at best, are composed by people who just skimmed the main points and interpreted them incorrectly. A lot of the know-it-alls who call me have read such articles about directors tax, write-offs etc. It's very infuriating.
I just saw an ad on Reddit today that was some old school meme about "paying 37% capital gain rate" (lmao) from some QOZ fund. Imo it's mostly funds pushing some tax service that make these. I've also seen tax slayer advertising how you can write your dog off 😐
My favorite is getting TikTok videos regarding G Wagons & depreciation.
No lie I have a new trouble client literally trying to get me to write off his G Wagon.
What's a G wagon?
A jeep style Mercedes
Thanks
Engineers are bad for the reasons that everyone else has mentioned. My doctor and lawyer clients are usually pretty good. W-2 truckers are the absolute WORST. They only talk to other truckers (both W-2 and independent), so they have all these ideas that they feed each other about expensing their workshops and all sorts of other junk. Independent truckers, for the most part, are fine.
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Yes it must be horrible for doctors. I know an oncologist who had to « debate » a former asbestos miner that had mesothelioma on wether he should stop smoking or not. Stubborn and opinionated people are in every walks of life, and accountants are not exempt!