Neal Winokur - The Grumpy Accountant: One Fed-Up Tax Pros Practical Plan to Fix Canadas Senselessly Complicated Tax System

F irst, I am thankful to all Canadians for complacently allowing our government to create such a complicated tax system. Without that happening, I would never have the opportunity to write The Grumpy Accountant . Likewise, I am grateful and would like to acknowledge the past 50 years of politicians who have been in power and did, quite literally, nothing to simplify our tax system. Without you, I would not be able to earn a living and would not have written this book.

When I became very serious about writing The Grumpy Accountant , I e-mailed the author of The Wealthy Barber and The Wealthy Barber Returns , David Chilton, to seek his permission and blessing for writing my book in a similar format to his. He called me back within ten minutes and encouraged me to move forward with the project. He gave me invaluable advice that forced me to really focus and re-think the purpose of the book. His online book marketing course, The Chilton Method (www.thechiltonmethod.com), which he advised me to take, was extremely helpful.

Heidy Lawrance and her team at wemakebooks.ca have made the option of self-publishing a practical reality. She was extremely patient with me and her advice and expertise have been crucial to this project. Catherine Leek, the editor, did an amazing job. Her patience, honesty and helpful feedback was critical in turning my writing into something coherent and readable.

Peter Bowerman is the author of The Well-Fed Self-Publisher (wellfedsp.com). He offers his advice and expertise to self-publishers and helped tremendously with a few specific aspects of this book.

My fellow accountant colleagues, Allan Gutenberg and George Farkas, read through the entire book and provided very valuable and thoughtful feedback. My friends, Jonathan Farkas and Valerie Haboucha, along with my loyal client, Iram Blajchman, my dear father Paul Winokur and my beloved wife Alison also read through the entire book and provided very important, brutally honest feedback and advice that I am extremely thankful for.

My dad is one of the wisest people that I know. As an actuary, he is extremely knowledgeable and insightful and provided very helpful advice regarding every aspect of the book.

Id like to thank my mother, Sherry, for teaching me how to read when I was a young child and for always encouraging me to read books when I was growing up. More recently, I am very thankful that she called me a grumpy old man at a family dinner, after I spent an hour complaining about everything I felt was wrong with society. The word grumpy stuck in my head and I knew I could eventually put it to a good productive use.

Lastly, I must thank my incredible wife Alison for putting up with me. While I was spending countless hours writing this book, she has been taking care of our baby. She gave me the original idea to write down my thoughts. Every day, after work, I would complain to her about how inefficient our tax system is. She grew tired of my complaints but suggested I write a blog or some articles and that was the start of collecting my thoughts into what eventually became The Grumpy Accountant . Without her support, this project would not have been possible.

I t was Monday morning, and, for Jerry, it was his first-ever Monday morning of his first day at his new job. He finally graduated from university where he studied architecture and was genuinely excited to begin the next phase of his life.

He arrived at work and his first order of business was to meet with the human resources department for an orientation. What in the world does it mean to be a human resource he thought to himself. Regardless, he had no time to ponder these great mysteries. He had forms to fill out.

He looked at the forms. They were strange and meaningless to him. There was one form for the federal government and another for the province. He had no idea how to fill them out. Each form had a list of tax deductions that he could fill out or leave blank. He had to fill in his social insurance number, which he didnt know off hand.

Jerry was flabbergasted. He had worked odd jobs throughout high school and university. Some of them were unpaid internships and others were informal. He didnt remember anything about filling out official-looking forms.

In all of his years in high school and university, he never learnt about any of these concepts. He felt lost and dejected. He was very embarrassed as he told the human resources employees that he must call his parents to ask them how he should fill out these forms. His parents told him his social insurance number but otherwise were unable to help him as they also had no idea what these forms were.

The human resources employees giggled but were helpful and reassuring. They helped him to fill out the forms as best he could.

The next few days went by without a hiccup. He settled into his new job and felt very lucky to find a position in one of the top architectural firms in the country.

On Friday of his second week of work, his co-workers in the other cubicles were very excited. There was a feeling in the air that he never experienced before. It was pay day. Today he would receive his first pay cheque for his first two weeks of work. He was ready. He had worked hard for so long, throughout high school and university, and at his first two weeks of work. Finally, hard work was starting to pay off.

An envelope was placed on Jerrys desk. He eagerly opened it, full of excitement and anticipation. Based on his salary of $40,000, he was anticipating a cheque in the amount of $1,500 for his first two weeks of work. It was missing $300.

He thought there must be some mistake. He then noticed another large piece of paper attached to the cheque that was entitled pay stub.

Jerry examined the pay stub very closely. He noticed that there was one amount called gross pay, and then there were several deductions such as CPP, EI, federal income tax, provincial income tax and finally net pay.

The gross pay was in fact $1,500 as he expected. But he had no idea what all these other strange letters and words meant. Why were these deductions so high? He was only earning $40,000 for the year and he felt he needed every penny, considering he still had student loans to pay off. Jerry vaguely remembered his parents frequently complaining of high taxes but he never imagined this would happen to him.

Jerry went home and prepared to go out to a friends birthday party. At the party, Jerry regaled his friends with stories from his first two weeks of work. He explained what happened with the pay cheque and pay stub and suddenly became very sad and gloomy.

One of the young women there, who Jerry had never seen before, approached Jerry and introduced herself. I have to tell you something. Back where I come from, across the pond in England, I never had to file a tax return. When I moved here to Canada, I thought it was so bizarre that almost everyone has to file a tax return. I felt completely lost so I asked around and I found a really good accountant. Perhaps you should meet with him and he can teach you everything you need to know.

Jerry was thankful for this advice. Thanks, that sounds great. My names Jerry by the way. And you are?

Elaine, she replied.

They shook hands and she provided Jerry with the contact information of her accountant. They continued talking and getting to know each other. Jerry was enamored by her British accent and all his sadness and gloominess disappeared for the rest of the night.

Jerry called the accountant first thing Monday morning. Jerrys first impression from the phone call was not that great. The accountant sounded exhausted and frustrated. Jerry was having second thoughts but decided to meet with him, so that he would have something interesting to talk about with Elaine.