Today we're studying ethics...

in my tax class.  I used to teach a 3 hour advanced course on this subject and it was one of my favorite classes to teach.  The perfect example of an ethical conflict for a tax preparer, CPA, Enrolled Agent, or Tax Lawyer works as follows.

The client is the person the tax professional goes to for their haircut/hairstyling.  The tax pro went to that person four times during the prior year and tipped them $15 each time.  The client is self-employed.

Now the tax pro is doing the client's tax return and asking questions about income and expenses.  The question comes up "so how much did you earn in tips last year?"

The client thinks for a minute and then says "none.  I didn't get any tips that year."

The tax professional knows that's a lie.  What is the tax pro's ethical obligation?  The answer tomorrow.

I liked doing the this day in history yesterday and got no negative feedback, so here is a little more of it:

On this day, 50 years ago, the U.S. began airlifting military hardware to Indian to prepare for the Sino-Indian war.  This war is very unusual because most of the fighting took place at very high altitudes for combat (above 14,000 feet).

On this day, 45 years ago, President Johnson held a secret meeting to try to get Americans to unite and support the war effort in Vietnam.  The consensus was to issue more optomistic reports on how the war was going.

On this day, 40 years ago, Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau of Canada announced he would not step down as 30 members of another party formed a coalition to keep his party in power.

On this day, 35 years ago, the Greek city of Athens suffered its worst storm in modern history, killing 38 people.

On this day, 31 years ago, the crew of a U.S. Navy nuclear submarine dropped a Poseidon missle from a crane.  The missile fell 17 feet without incident, although it could have caused a non-nuclear explosion that would have released a cloud of radioactivity. 

And on this day, 24 years ago, the very first computer "worm", the Morris worm, was released.  It had been written by Robert T. Morris, a graduate student at Cornell.  He was convicted of violating Federal law.

Kudos to George Lucas for choosing to give most of that $4.05 billion to a non-profit that supports education.  I've been a big fan of Warren Buffett's position on wealth-transfer for some time, when it comes to the very wealthy.  He is leaving 1% of his fortune each to his kids.  So well over 95% will be "returned to society".   Foundations working for change is a great place for billionaire money, as long as its positive change and not funneling more of society's money into the hands of those billioniares.

I went somewhere new to play trivia last night.  This site's game is part of a "league" and by qualifying for their season-ending tournament, my teammates and I will get a shot at $2,000 in prizes at the tournament.  So one of my other "usual" trivia outings is going to go bye-bye in favor of this.  At least for the tournament qualifying period.

Wow.  We had a question about the final film of River Phoenix at Tuesday night's trivia and missed it.  Now I just read that "Dark Blood" was shown in public for the first time at a film festival in the Netherlands, two decades after his death.  Maybe it will ultimately get a commercial release if they can resolve the rights issues.

Are you feeling like me, let's have this election already so we can get rid of the incessant election commercials?