Post #575201 by Cammo on Tue, Feb 8, 2011 11:40 AM

**Part 2 - Receipts, Fun, and Booze **

More rules - the typical businessman’s expense account now has tax limitations.

The IRS stipulates that your meals and entertainment expenses have to be an obvious business expense, not a wild weekend of strip clubs, bars, and spas. But first the expenses have to pass the CPA who doles out the company’s travel money meagerly. Otherwise, the accountant knows a federal audit of entertainment expenses and outlandish travel bucks spent can put a corporation out of business. The federal audit is what all accountants dread. It can get them fired, it can close down their business. They live in fear of them.

Limbo Lizard is exactly right. That’s why if you are on a corporate expense account, you can’t stay at hotels called...

Hulu Lulu’s South Seas Getaway and Pleasure Island Spa, Home of the $100 Naked Oiled Lobster Dance and the 32 Ounce Volcano Voobaloo Mystery Killer Kocktail

... even if that sounds like a pretty fun place, and even if you could book it yourself! Cause it ain’t business and won’t pass the federal audit as a write off. And it lists the name and even the contact phone number (!) and pretty soon the website (!) or Facebook page(!!!!) on your receipt or your corporate credit card drop-down dated expense list when you bring it back to your sour-faced CPA who DIDN’T get to go on your trip. And that accountant ain’t pleased even when you stay at BORING PLACES!

You CAN stay at a hotel called...

The Sheraton Business Center International; WiFi and Videoconferencing

See?

It’s bulletproof to the IRS watchers always lurking around the corner. This goes DOUBLE for restaurants and bars you hang out at while on your little junket. You just plain can’t go to...

Wild Wendy’s Tiki Asian Whorehouse and Orgy Pool with 24 Hour BBQ, Free Saki and Vomitorium Privileges, Drive-Thru, Color TV!

You CAN go to...

The Sheraton Business Center International’s Steakhouse, but only if you order a reasonably priced dinner. Because there’s an electronic paper trail now that didn’t exist in the 1950’s. The ease of travel by corporate credit card is killing the fun by making it almost automatic to see exactly where you have been, right down to the minute of the transaction. And this ain't gonna get any better in the future, cause they're working on credit cards that will list ALL purchases you make, itemized, instead of single grouped charges as they do now. In other words, they'll look just like cash register receipts.

See?

My dad worked for Piedmont Chemical in the 1960’s, and went on cross country business trips for them all the time. He didn’t use a credit card in those days because Piedmont didn’t WANT him to. They WANTED him to have a good time and they didn’t want any paper trails. In the 1930’s - 1960’s there were no paper receipts, no credit card receipts, no paper trail - at least, not like there is now. Dad got a per diem allowance in cash, a hotel room and a pat on the back. Most of the time he’d come back from these trips bleary eyed and smiling. Where had he gone? Carousing. National sales conferences were often attended by the wildest goings-on you can imagine, and if Shriners were involved it they were pretty dangerous madhouses of booze, cigarettes, Party Girls and late night mayhem, all fueled by the per diem. Cops were paid to look the other way, taxi drivers ruled the night and 10 to 1 you slipped your driver a matchbook with your sleazy hotel name and address printed on the cover to get you home that night.

Per Diem = Tiki Bar Heaven.

A while ago, Buzzy lucked out by purchasing a giant box of Tiki Bar matchbooks and other paraphernalia from the daughter of the guy who collected them. We call this guy Matchbook Man, and he seemed to have been a national salesman of some kind, and MAN did he live it up. He seemed to have gone to pretty much EVERY DANG TIKI BAR in the whole country, but also stopped at every Playboy club, every BBQ hangout, and made a detour to Las Vegas whenever possible. There were obscure hotel keys, gambling chips, cigars and strip club tokens stashed among the matchbooks. And as Buzzy noted, every single match had been used. He lit up cigarettes or the cigs of his clients wherever he went. This guy, Matchbook Man is OUR HERO. He was the consummate 60’s businessman, and you BET he didn’t collect receipts. He was probably successful as hell.

Go back a few more years. It’s almost impossible for us to imagine pre-1917 accounting methods. It meant almost NO accounting at all, cash transactions, no receipts, sales records were there to keep employees honest; not to account to the Feds. In the 1960’s my dad still bought major supplies by chaining a locked briefcase to his wrist and flying the cash cross country to the supplier. This was in fact demanded at Piedmont Chemical; it was a completely normal business procedure. It took decades to change the public mind to where they now view this as near-criminal behavior.

(...Leading one to ponder that the reason it’s almost impossible to track down Tiki mug sales and business information about the makers is because they were under the table business, cash only sales to bars and ducking the Feds.)

Think I’m exaggerating? Check out the case of our honorable ambassador to Luxembourg, Cynthia Stroum. She’s been in the news quite a bit lately, anybody notice? Apparently she was appointed ambassador to Luxembourg and when she showed up there made herself quite thoroughly hated by repeatedly screaming at the professional embassy workers. The staff were on the point of quitting until they realized that they could simply forward her electronic trail of expenses to the State Department in D.C. and let them mull it over. It worked perfectly. Her trail of buying hideously expensive booze, new beds, and her no-business jaunt to Switzerland got her fired in less than a week.

The point is, if you take away businessmen on trips and you take away families (who wants to get drunk and watch hula shows with their wife and kids?) WHO IS LEFT as the clients of the typical Tiki bar? Locals? They’ll show up no matter what the decor; by definition they’re LOCALS.

NEXT - Conventions, or A Thousand Fish In A Barrel