Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications
Monday, Jul 29, 2002
Financial Daily from THE HINDU group of publications Monday, Jul 29, 2002 |
|
|
|
|
|
Corporate
-
Accountancy Columns - Say Cheek The Big Four bash D. Murali
IT has always been so easy to divide the accountants — because they deal with too many divisions all the time. Every transaction has two aspects, debit and credit. You put money in bank or cash box. At the end of the day you make profit or loss. What you get is either capital or revenue. And with the taxman, you either win or lose. The accountant has one perennial problem — to decide whether to disclose something or not. And when he chooses to disclose, whether to put it in the statement or the notes is a different dilemma. Again when he chooses not to disclose, he wonders whether he should shred it or put the thing in a secret diary that gets unearthed at some unearthly hour. When he sees a client during finalisation, the auditor has to decide whether he would be discussing with him the proper heads of account or wagging his tail to get something on the side. All the world's made of assets and liabilities, and the whole list of debtors can be split into good and bad. With money in hand, they know only two things are possible — either record it or stash it in the pocket. And when recording, you can either do it the right way or the wrong way. When you do it the wrong way, they call it omission or commission. Whatever they have been doing all these days — cutting vouchers into receipts and payments, trapping deals as allowed or disallowed, screening transactions as intra or ultra vires — is now hitting them back with a vengeance. There are distinctly two groups of CAs: Those who want the Big 4 to go, and those who don't. While the vocals are spilling a lot of bile on the misdeeds of Andersen and its chums, the anti-group loses no time to play the `good boy' role, picking holes in the arguments of the `quit India' lobby. If you are with a B4G (that is, a Big Four Guy/Gal), don't waste time talking about `threats posed by the lobby' because there is no great threat. Because, you can always classify accountants into two categories: Those who can be bought and those who can't.
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail
|
Stories in this Section |
|
The Hindu Group: Home | About Us | Copyright | Archives | Contacts | Subscription Group Sites: The Hindu | Business Line | The Sportstar | Frontline | Home |
Copyright © 2002, The
Hindu Business Line. Republication or redissemination of the contents of
this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of
The Hindu Business Line
|