CEDRIC THE ACCOUNTANT

By Rhayna Tera, copyright 2020

Warning: If you don't like reading transgender or related fiction, then stop reading now.

Author's Note: none.

Disclaimer: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

RT

Cedric Ashton-Stufmeyer-Jones was an accountant. Not just an accountant; in fact, he was an investigator for the Department of Goods & Services Tax. It was thrilling stuff! Moreover, he was well respected by the many other accountants in the Department. His was the life of envy, in their estimation. What, dear reader, would make them so envious?

Well, it was his non-work life, his out-of-office life: in a phrase, his married life. Unlike most accountants (and bankers and librarians for that matter), Cedric ruled the roost at home. His colleagues knew that his was a remarkable achievement for an accountant. They oft listened to him regal them with tales of his 1950s-styled married life.

So, let us briefly peer into a day in the married life of Cedric Ashton Stufmeyer-Jones:

-----000-----

Cedric's alarm went off at 6:30 a.m. and he sat up. His large wife, Beatrix, slept next to him. "Darling, I think you should make us some coffee," he said to wake her.

She groaned, rolled over, and replied, "Ricci, dear, I've tried again and again to make it just the way you like it. Perhaps you could make one more sample again and show me how it's done, yes?"

Cedric got out of bed and put on his fleece house-pants. He told her sternly, "This will be the last time, darling. You must do better at it." They had been married six years.

"Yes, dear," she answered and watched him slink away. She smiled fondly at him.

-----000-----

"No, no, no. Not like that. Please do it like this," Cedric said as he got up from the kitchen table and took over the cooking of the eggs at the stove.

Beatrix sat down and watched him; she sipped her coffee. "Oh, so that's how!" she said. "I never thought of that," she added.

Cedric looked at her in a paternalistic way: "Just try harder, darling. I know you can do it if you just try harder."

"Yes, dear." She took another sip. "I'm sorry." She batted her eyelashes at him.

-----000-----

Cedric stood at the doorway, suit on, briefcase in hand, his serious face underlying the importance of accountancy.

"Let me get your tie for you, dear," Beatrix said to him. She straightened it and flattened his lapels for him. "You are so handsome and kind. I am so fortunate to have you." She meant it sincerely, mostly; the fact was that Cedric was not much of a looker, not ugly though. Indeed, he was very much the prototypical accountant: frail, pale, and creatively stale.

"Be sure to have dinner ready for me this time, Beatrix. I must insist this time." Six years, he fumed to himself, and she still botches every meal. "I'm not going to help her tonight. I swear I won't." And off to work he went.

Once he left, Beatrix dashed to get ready for her work.

-----000-----

"This place has never been audited," Cedric's supervisor said to him as he flung the file to Cedric. He opened the file. The company was named 'Donna's Dungeon of Domination'.

He had never heard of it.

He swiftly summarized the file. The business had been open for six years. It had slowly but steadily rising revenues; last year's tax return indicated $576,000 gross revenue, $79,394 net, the usual sort of business deductions, and finally taxes and remittances of $138,675. At first glance, nothing eye-catching there, he thought.

"I'll do it straight away, sir," Cedric said and left to prepare for the audit.

-----000-----

The building was non-descript. Therefore, dear reader, I won't describe it.

He knocked on the front door. A large womanly figure dressed in black leather, her face covered by a mask, wearing high heels, and carrying a bullwhip answered his knocks. She immediately rocked back, as though shocked.

"May I help you?" she hoarsely asked in a stilted voice after a slightly awkward pause.

"Good morning, I am Mr. Cedric Ashton-Stufmeyer-Jones, accountant and inspector #483-35A of the Department of Goods & Services Tax." He passed her his card and flashed his badge. He enjoyed flashing his badge; it underlined the importance of chartered accountancy generally and the authority of his Department specifically.

"I have the lawful authority to inspect these premises for compliance with tax legislation, regulations both statutory and otherwise, Departmental interpretation policies and guidelines. Your co-operation is required," he passed her an official form, "under section 278(17.2)(a)(iii)(sub-g) of the Act."

"We're opening in 30 minutes. Please," she hoarsely said, welcoming him in.

-----000-----

"These capital cost allowance depreciations concern office and business equipment with which I am unfamiliar and for which there are official guidelines," he remarked as he feverishly poured over the books in the manager's office.

"Is that a problem?" the very tall, buxom manager asked. Like her large employee, she too was covered in black leather from head to toe and was mounted on a pair of stainless-steel stilettos that had, it appeared, some small specks of white goo on them.

"It may be a problem if your company has not submitted a Form 251-H. If the form was submitted, no problem. If it was not, then I must carry out an inspection of the equipment under subsection 54(j.3) of the regulations. Will that be a problem?"

The manager told him that they had not submitted the Form and therefore he best follow her employee --- the large woman who had greeted him at the door --- to the room in which much of the equipment was stored.

-----000-----

Cedric took measurements of the first device. It leant against a wall and looked like an extremely large 'X'. It was made of oak. There were various straps on each leg and one in the centre. "You've claimed an accelerated depreciation for this under an industrial equipment scale. May I ask why?"

The manager had a quick response: "During regular business hours with half-hour slots and ten minutes between, we can process more than 25 customers daily on this device."

"Ha!" Cedric exclaimed. "That was your mistake. The appropriate basis for the valuation and reduction is based for non-mechanical devices such as this, on a textile and resource scale: here, wood and leather. The big buckles don't count. Let me revise your figures..."

-----000-----

Cedric examined the equipment that had been claimed as 'safety gear'.

"Would you like to...uh...try one on?" the large woman hoarsely asked him.

He shook his head. "I will not because my inspection here must be based solely upon objective, empirical measurements and evidence. What I see though is another problem. Insofar as a leather mask is indeed not an unconventional type of fire protective gear, its functional uses here appear in doubt.

"First, they are not stored in situ with your fire extinguishers. Second, they are neither orange nor yellow blaze, and those are the only two colours permitted under the regulations." He grimly added, "I'm sorry, but I must disallow that particular entry for...I see, $745.28 on line 248 of Schedule B of your return." He typed away at his laptop.

The manager and large woman looked at each other.

-----000-----

"You are going to have to convince me on this," Cedric officiously remarked. He could not comprehend how they could have claimed these things.

"Well," the manager began, "many of our customers enjoy this. They ask for it."

"I regret to inform you ma'am," Cedric countered, "but the essential function test under the legislation controls. Yours is not a provision of a diapering service. Rather, it's obvious to me that your company merely supplies diapers. Therein lies the difference between using a Goods Table under the 2009 statute or the Services Deduction formula under section 2056(25.6)(d) of the amending legislation.

"The difference to your tax return will be... please bear with me... just one more minute... Ah! Your company appears to be positioned to receive a return of $241.89 which I can adjust retroactively to the date on which your return was submitted."

Cedric was pleased with himself to have discovered another error.

-----000-----

He finished his work. The three of them were back in the manager's office. The company owed an additional $98.72 which the manager paid from petty cash and for which Cedric issued a receipt (receipt #73893).

"I don't normally comment on the nature of the business of a company that I inspect. However, in this case, I am going to make an exception." He waited for them to acknowledge just how serious a deviation from standard Departmental protocol he was making.

He construed their opening their eyes wider, as if in disbelief, as such.

"For the life of me, I cannot see how any mature man confident in his masculinity would submissively subject himself to such acts, particularly toward more controlling female figures. I am not criticizing nor condemning the nature of your work. I am simply expressing in stark terms my astonishment."

The manager and large woman looked at each other.

"I take my leave and recommend that you retain a chartered accountant to assist you in preparing your next year's return. Thank you for your time and assistance," he offered as he left.

-----000-----

Beatrix greeted him breathlessly by the door. "I just got home too, dear. Let me get your coat and your briefcase please."

"Thank you, Beatrix. It was an exciting day."

"I bet it was. Accountancy is like that! Please tell me."

"In the living room, darling. I think I would also like a G&T for our talk. What's for dinner?"

Beatrix put her hand to her mouth. "I'm sorry, dear. I was running late and couldn't prepare the casserole. I suppose---"

Cedric sighed. "Look. In the fridge are all the ingredients. Remember last weekend how I showed you how to pre-prepare them? It's not rocket science, darling. Okay, follow me and I'll show you one more time." A slightly exasperated Cedric gathered the ingredients and put them in a baking pan.

"How do you mix them together, again, dear?" Beatrix asked as she leaned against the kitchen island, sipping the G&T he had prepared for her.

-----000-----

"Have you finished cleaning the bathroom yet, darling?"

"No, Cedric, I am still working on our banking."

At least, Cedric thought to himself, that was one thing she had learnt extremely well. He was proud of her. She managed their banking almost to his exacting accounting standards. Ask her, and she knew on the spot precisely how much money was in which account and what the value of their various investment portfolios were doing.

"There's still a ring in the toilet," he said to her. This is the last time I'm doing this, he fumed to himself. "Did you watch that YouTube video on how to clean toilets that I sent you?"

"Not yet, dear."

-----000-----

"And that's how I showed them the benefits of a year-forward claim under section 836(f) instead of a post-Fiscal Year retroactive submission using Schedule 18(G). I think they appreciated my ingenuity." Cedric lay on the couch after dinner next to Beatrix. "How was yours?" he asked.

"Not much new. Just the normal ins-and-outs, you know, teaching little bitches how to obey, corrective discipline, whimpering, anal gland squeezing, urination, and defecation. Dogs; that's my day, me, the dog trainer."

Cedric was glad that she enjoyed her work training dogs. It was unfortunate that she never had any exciting stories like his adventures in accountancy and tax remittance, but such was life. He loved her anyway, no matter her job.

-----000-----

Their bedside lamps were on. They were reading and chatting about the day.

His book was entitled, 'Tax Deductions In Imperial Rome: The Fourth Republic'.

Hers was covered in a brown paper but was in fact volume 5 of a series entitled, 'Japanese Roping Techniques'.

They put their respective books down and turned off the lights. They lay facing each other in the quiet room, dimly lit by a distant streetlight. The suburb was silent.

"I love you, Beatrix. Please try again to get the coffee right tomorrow morning, darling."

Beatrix caressed his cheek. She kissed him. "Yes, dear. I'll try again tomorrow, but you may have to help me."

She looked at him with nothing but love in her eyes. She was so proud of him for his professionalism; she had never seen him working before today. She adored him because he was, in so many of his endearing ways, so much more of a man than any of the customers she had abused and whipped that day.

And he knew how to make her coffee perfectly.

END

By Rhayna Tera, copyright 2020