One solves the other [LWN.net]

One solves the other

Posted Jan 15, 2009 3:37 UTC (Thu) by ncm (subscriber, #165)
In reply to: The exceedingly grumpy editor's accounting system update by JoeBuck
Parent article: The exceedingly grumpy editor's accounting system update

Whatever the accountants are using must have solved the tax form problem, so the remaining problem is solved once the accountant can import your data. The accountants, then, need to bludgeon their own software suppliers into accepting some sort of open format. It's conceivable that they do already, but we just don't know about it, and the accountants don't know either because they never asked.

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One solves the other

Posted Jan 15, 2009 23:10 UTC (Thu) by giraffedata (subscriber, #1954) [Link]

Yes, the article is a little confusing in that it gives as one reason LWN can't use free accounting software that LWN wants a separate accountant to figure LWN's taxes. The article gives as another reason that LWN couldn't print tax forms with the free software. Seems to me, that's not an issue if LWN uses a separate accountant, so I don't know why the article brings it up.

I once tried to hire a professional tax accountant for a business, but he did business only with clients who used Quickbooks, and the business had a custom bookkeeping system that integrated with several other business systems.

I thought it was strange for him to limit his business (remember, we never got to discussing price), but he said there was a shortage of accountants (i.e. surplus of Quickbooks-based clients) in the world at that time, which made it impossible for an accountant to profitably do anything else.

I presume that shortage eventually resolved itself, which means it's conceivable that a few accountants in a place such as California could achieve an equivalent economy of scale working with free software clients.