re: How the F do you explain this - Trump tax returns

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O'Brien went on to explain why he thinks it's likely Trump's chief accountant, Allen Weisselberg, will flip on Trump.

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This would be worse for the CPA than it would be for Trump. I'm not buying it.

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thinks Trump's accountant will now flip

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he will sleep better now

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I think

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he thinks it's likely

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He probably has

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What passes for journalism these days is flat out pathetic.

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an experienced and successful prosecutor MIGHT have planned an investigation the details of which he simply has not yet disclosed to the public,

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Maybe. But the reporter claims he has seen Trump's financials and says he committed crimes based on what he saw. If that's the case, say what it is and what charges, in the reporter's opinion, could be brought forth against Trump.

It's all in the possession of the DA so the reporter could give his opinion, yet he doesn't. Just says cri.es were committed. And I'm supposed to just take his word on it when the entire media world has done nothing but attack the man and been proven to outright lie and make shite up about him and/or his family many times? Nah, I'll wait until the proof is presented.

Funny how liberals will fall all over themselves reporting innuendo, speculation, lies and rumor, like Trump's taxes, Muh Rushan Clooshun, and liberal prosecutors will foam at the mouth insinuating criminal activity.

Congress will impeach and the DOJ will ruin lives over these sorts of rumors and speculation.

BUT, someone like Hillary or Biden, with known factual evidence of criminality being public record, never get prosecuted.

This is clearly politics, and the DA's are liberal partisan hacks.

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Nah. The tax classes in an accounting program--at least the good ones-- are very much about concepts. Sure, there's numbers and calculations but concepts are the emphasis.

But they aren't particularly challenging programs and while concepts are important, you come out ill-prepared to work at an accounting firm. Nobody cares if you can write a research memo if you can't audit a tax provision.

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Sounds like a crappy program, unlike the one I went to.

And what do you mean by "auditing a tax provision", lol? Most of the learning curve was in dealing with the reporting software, and that was a short learning curve.

We were taught what documentation was necessary to support a tax position for a filed return.

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The tax classes in an accounting program--at least the good ones-- are very much about concepts. Sure, there's numbers and calculations but concepts are the emphasis.

But they aren't particularly challenging programs and while concepts are important, you come out ill-prepared to work at an accounting firm. Nobody cares if you can write a research memo if you can't audit a tax provision.

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You and I must have attended very different business schools.

"Federal Income Tax" was the closest that I came to making a "B" in any class within the College of Business. My average on the four tests during the semester was something like 40% in that class, but I got an "A" at the end of the semester, because the class was graded on a bell curve. A friend of mine had an average in the high-twenties and got a "B."

The tests in that class were exclusively about memorizing everything in the text, most of which was not ever covered in the lectures. Maybe BiteMe's post-grad course was different.

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You and I must have attended very different business schools.

"Federal Income Tax" was the closest that I came to making a "B" in any class with the College of Business. My average on the four tests during the semester was something like 40% in that class, but I got an "A" at the end of the semester, because the class was graded on a bell curve. A friend of mine had an average in the high-twenties and got a "B."

The tests in that class were exclusively about memorizing everything in the text, most of which was not ever covered in the lectures. Maybe BiteMe's post-grad course was different.

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Federal income taxes were divided into courses where I went. Corporations was one course, which covered entity formation, taxation, transfers, sales, mergers, dividends, planning, and S-Corporation differences.

Then you had individual taxation as a specific course.
Then partnerships.
Then tax research courses (2).
Then a state and local taxation course.
Then an trust and estates course. That was my least favorite one, and probably the most complicated.

Our tests were mixed. While we briefed selected court cases as almost daily assignments in the main courses, we also had to do mock returns, partnership allocation problems, tax calculation problems, etc. Tests might have asked about the significance of a case or two, but most of the problems were application.

You had to actually apply the knowledge to a problem with a fact pattern that included numbers, which is why several of the law students dropped out. They did not have a strong accounting background at all. Not understanding how debits and credits work, how a balance sheet and income statement relate to each other, and other such things caused them a lot of grief.

Of course, I'm talking about a Masters in Taxation degree, not a single undergraduate class on taxes.

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BiteMe2020

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Back in the day, TAMU had plenty of tax courses, too, but only one was a mandatory course for all Business majors (I did a double major in Accounting & Finance). All the other tax classes were attended mostly by people who had chosen to focus upon Tax Accounting as a career. I suspect that they probably WERE less about memorization.

Honestly, I think that class in question probably was INTENDED as a means of weeding-out the folks that did not REALLY have an interest in a career related to Tax Accounting.

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Honestly, I think that class in question probably was INTENDED as a means of weeding-out the folks that did not REALLY have an interest in a career related to Tax Accounting.

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Perhaps. I enjoyed it, because it taught us how to think critically and be an advocate for your client. Accounting masters programs pretty much had two major tracts - GAPP accounting for folks destined to be financial statement auditors, and tax, for folks who wanted to do that. With either, you were qualified to go into corporate accounting departments, too.

I did public accounting for about 4 years, then went into finance myself.