The guy is a douche. I'd fire my accountant immediately if he said that kind of shit.
1) Actually good tax strategies are a joint effort between the accountant and the client. There's a lot of gray, the client better be OK with and onboard with the strategies being used
2) He's a professional (supposedly) adviser and it's his job to make his client look good, not bad
3) Whatever he thinks, it's not appropriate for him to come out and say things like this about his client publicly
He's an old geezer and retired for a while now...think he's in his 80's, give the guy a break....coming up with those tax ideas and loop holes was what he could be proud of himself for, in his eyes...
This guy is from my world. Accountants and lawyers work for me. I'm their client, it's their professional responsibility to act in my interest. And Trump said nothing derogatory to him. Everyone knows his accountant gets credit for what he does. No, being in your 80s is not an excuse for unprofessionalism. You have no idea how completely inappropriate what he said was. He does know how inappropriate it was
I agree with you..but only cut the old geezer a break because he may not realize what he had said and done...reporters are tricky....
Fair enough on the press. But he shouldn't have been talking about Trump and tax preparation at all. How is it after doing a job for decades, suddenly he's supposed to not grasp basic professionalism in his field? If Trump had criticized him then that would be one thing, but he didn't. Everyone who works in that area would know that of course the accountant gets credit for the accounting. No one thought Trump did it without his accountant.
What you're also failing to realize is that if he really did it without Trump's involvement, that's not appropriate either. Decisions have to be made in accounting by the client. Here's the standard my accountant and I have. Government is full of gray and if you just pay everything safely, you're going to be way overpaying. There's also the future. The whole thing is a stupid farce.
So let's go to me. Thoughts:
1) I have the standard for my books for gray areas (e.g., deductions) that if worse case is that the IRS will charge me interest and probably not a penalty, then I want to take it
2) Other things my accountant has to ask me questions since I bought and sold businesses regarding what I'm planning to do because there are multiple legitimate ways to treat some things and where I plan to go and the timing is important
3) So, I have my accountant provide me with options and tradeoffs. I have also proposed other options and asked him "what if I do ... then can I do ...?" Sometimes yes, sometimes no, sometimes yes but ...
Trump did a lot bigger deals with larger implications than me. Explain in the 3 basic interactions between the business (me) and my accountant how one of us can get the credit and not the other?
What I'm suggesting is that his accountant is a Hillary supporter. I don't see how he would have been so unprofessional otherwise