Rebuttal To a Blogger On Morals and Ethics

By Jason M. Jones, MBA

I figured that it was time for another blog update.  Our firm continues to be on the move, with some possible strategic moves of our own which could place us in a prime position as we make plans for 2012, which we are eager to have take place and are excited at the possibility of undertaking.  We are also completing our plans to move which will take place this upcoming week (week of September 19, 2011) into a more spacious office facility in downtown Columbus.  Our grand re-opening will take place on September 26, and we will have a very special suitemate accompany us for what we think will be an awesome business relationship.  The new address will be announced on or shortly before September 26, so keep checking our website during the week of September 19 or you can check for updates at our Facebook page.

This blog article really doesn’t have anything to do with accounting, finance, CFOs, or credentialing.  I really wrote this blog to let off some steam get some issues off my chest regarding a recent debate I got into with a particular blogger.

This blogger I had first heard of back in late 2009 from another blogger who was an “unenrolled” tax preparer named Robert Flach who markets himself as “The Wandering Tax Pro“.  Well, in one of his blog updates, Robert mentioned a tax lawyer he got into a rather heated disagreement with.  This disagreement came about as a result of upcoming plans by the IRS to require all tax preparers to be registered with the IRS, and to take a competency exam that would qualify them to be paid federal income tax return preparers, with the main point of contention being whether or not the tax preparation industry should be regulated.  According to the tax lawyer, whose name is Peter Pappas (and is the blogger I have been debating with), his implication is that unless a tax preparer was an attorney, a CPA, or an EA, that they could not be considered as being a professional in their field.  Such follow up disputes to this effect between the two has resurfaced over the last two years but with diminished frequency, though I found the debate of the subject rather interesting, which was often done actively in the blog article’s comments and passively through rebuttals of each other’s blog articles.

I will reserve comment on this subject not only because it is irrelevant to the theme of this article, but also because it will only serve to detract from what I really want to talk about.  Suffice it to say, however, that I sensed a certain vibe from Peter that I wasn’t quite sure if it tied into an underlying theme that would serve as his blog’s platform.  Nevertheless, I continued to read his blog periodically, though I continued to detect the same theme throughout his articles.

Last week, that theme was confirmed when I read a blog article Peter entitled “The Ethics of Walking Away From Your Mortgage“.  In a nutshell, Peter felt it was immoral and unethical for a homeowner to strategically default on their mortgage, a practice which falls under what is known as “welshing”, the failure to fulfill an obligation.  A strategic default is simply a buzzword for what is known in the legal profession as an efficient breach, the voluntary breach of a contract by a party who feels that the performance of the contract would incur greater economic harm than if they would breach it.

It was in reading this article (and its predecessor article) that the blog’s overall theme became perfectly clear and I felt compelled to respond (or at least confirm and address its theme based on the way Peter would address my comments).  I won’t rehash what I addressed to him here, I will just provide the weblink to the article’s comments and say that my feedback to Peter begins at comment #17.

(Editor’s Note: This blog article was originally written on the evening of Saturday, September 17, but because it was unfinished it remained in draft form and therefore not published.  Since then, Peter and I exchanged a few more comments, and in short, while my original motive for writing this blog no longer exists, I figured by “promoting” two more names that are active in the blogosphere, I am bringing at least some semblance of goodwill to the virtual world).

To make a long story short, while Peter and I still disagree on the morality of the practice of welshing, the key thing I came away with was that the debate resulted in an amicable stalemate, and that we both humbly conceded on a variety of issues surrounding the topic, hence the stalemate.

Personally, my opinion of Peter is that he genuinely likes to debate on thought-provoking legal and tax topics, and that in order to engage the reader and provoke intellectually-driven thought and discussion, sometimes it is necessary to play devil’s advocate.

We’re probably not done debating on such topics, but if nothing else, he and his blog (as well as Robert Flach’s) gets a free shout-out and who know, one or both of them may become guest bloggers here someday.

Anyway…we’ll see what happens.