Knowledge that Transforms

Abstract This article focuses on the private or public accounting. Colleges offering courses in accounting have lately been besieged by applicants for admission. For the most part those desiring to enroll are honorably discharged veterans whose educational programs were interrupted by induction into the services. Among those accepted many are taking refresher courses and all are faced with the perplexing problem of choosing sooner or later between a position in the accounting division of a business, institutional, or governmental activity and a career in public accounting. Any statement regarding the advantages and disadvantages of the two accounting fields must be related to the temperament dandy the ultimate goal of the aspirant In business organizations accountancy-trained persons find their principal work opportunities in positions leading to cost accountant, internal auditor, chief accountant, credit executive, controller, and treasurer. In governmental departments investigative accountants, tax auditors, and analysts are in demand. The ultimate vocational opportunity in practice is that of staff supervisor and principal.

Abstract This article says that accounting and accountants had their beginning in bookkeeping and bookkeepers. Modern bookkeeping apparently first came into general usage in the fifteenth century in response to the rapidly growing commerce and trade conducted by proprietorships and partnerships in the Italian republics. The bookkeeping of that time, although basically the same as present-day bookkeeping, was very simple, as suited the needs of business, and was based on a few simple rules of debit and credit and recording procedure. Theory and accountants did not exist, it was necessary only that bookkeepers of the time be accurate, methodical, and attentive to application of the rules. Although the profession of accounting, even in its early days, included among its members many men with broad liberal education, mans' of its members for the first quarter of the twentieth century were self-taught as to the technical aspects of their profession. With the growth of large corporations and the increasing intricacies of corporate accounting, the larger corporations found that the accounting problems incident to their operations required employees, such as comptrollers, auditors, and treasurers, with a higher type of training and education than the bookkeeper.

Abstract In this article the authors comment on an article related to placement of taxes in income statement, which was published in an earlier issue of the journal "The Accounting Review," as of January 1946. There are several kinds of revenue deductions which are nonetheless broadly in the same pew when it comes to the over-all calculation of net corporate income. First of the three classes of deductions is cost, in the sense of goods and services definitely consumed in the process of production. Second is losses, in the sense of outlays of one sort or another which have lost all significance so far as future operations are concerned, even though not having made any recognizable contribution in the past operations and last is taxes, which is payments to governmental units as computed on various bases and representing services only in the vague general sense in which government makes a contribution to the carrying on of the particular business enterprise. All of these classes of deductions are in the same boat when it comes to the question of determining profits.