November 17, 2004
arsenic and old lace
She's so innocent looking. And frumpy.
My new accountant. She's sitting in a corner built from filing cabinets piled to the ceiling with files and archive boxes. At first sight my uncharitable thought is that "life must be pretty easy if you can turn up to work looking that every day". She's a cuddly white-haired lady in what appears to be someone's cast-off fishing clothes.
She understands exactly what I'm looking for. In fact she isn't an accountant at all but the wife of one, who bothers himself with important-accountant-requiring clients while she provides the simple services that clients like me need. A BTW number* Someone to fill in the impossible form I have from the tax office. She goes further. She will also claim back all the BTW I pay on business related costs. "Business related costs" turns out to be a fairly flexible term. It's scope gets steadily broader. It is also apparently retrospective. She'll do things for me monthly. I thought a couple of visits per year but for a fee WAY below their normal rates and of course depending on what I earn, because I am just starting, she'll do things for me monthly.
I can see the train coming but by now I am too fascinated to move away from the tracks. If she was 20 years younger and in a suit I would have walked out long ago. But she's a frumpy late-middle-aged lady in a cast-off gardening outfit and its the combination of a veneer of ineptness with a very smooth deviousness that has me fascinated.
Twice, not once but twice, when there was a question that she or her 'directeur' husband couldn't answer she suggested I go home and ask my husband to call the relevant government department to verify exactly what applied in my case. If she'd been male I would have decked* her.
I leave everyhting in her capable hands. And with the added thought that I'm probably going to end up either on tax fraud charges or buried under her floorboards. I'm not sure which but I'm now totally committed to finding out. For a monthly fee.
BTW=GST or VAT
deck=verb. Australian for punching someone so hard they "hit the deck" or the floor.
Posted by Faith | TrackBack