It’s About to Be Dot-Com Boom 2.0 in Accounting

Posted on by Going Concern News Desk
guy at a desk making it rain

VC firm Andreessen Horowitz just did an interesting piece called “Death, Taxes, and AI: How Generative AI Will Change Accounting” that’s worth a read if you’re at all interested in this topic but most interesting of all (to us anyway) was this chart of early stage AI startups in this space.

We suspect it won’t be long before a chart like this will require a looooong scroll to view.

Chart by Andreessen Horowitz

This of course doesn’t include big firms’ proprietary in-house tech nor the many existing solutions that have rolled AI into their offerings.

Some of you may be too young to remember the late 90s/very early 2000s when everyone and their mother tried to strike it rich on the internet. A famous example of catastrophic dot-com failure was Pets.com, a company that went under just months after spending $1.2 million on a Super Bowl ad.

Up until March of 2000, strictly-online companies fueled by truckloads of VC money were popping up left and right; after March, they were dying twice as fast. When it was all over, corporate vultures picked off the pieces they could salvage — PetSmart bought the Pets.com domain for an undisclosed sum in December 2000, the puppet was not part of that deal — and only a few victors remained. You may have heard of one or two of them, like Amazon and eBay. And of course these days the Pets.com concept is reborn in Chewy, the 13-year-old pet-only online retailer that turned a profit for the first time in Q3 2022.

Those of you grey-streaked sages who did live through that period will probably feel a whiff of nostalgia as you watch a scaffold of technology get constructed around the accounting profession in current year. The flood of VC money will no doubt subsidize some really cool next-gen solutions…along with many, many lame ones. If we start getting Super Bowl ads for AI-driven month-end close products then you know it’s about to be over.

Pick your winners carefully, it’s about to get all Hunger Games up in here.

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Strip Club Owner, Sans High School Diploma, Blames His Accountant for Tax Troubles

When you own a strip club there are certain things that you understand. Things like, knowing that there is large portion of the male species that will pay women to take off their clothes regardless of the fact that sex is not happening. And while this is going on, they’ll imbibe lots of booze. And eventually, they may get hungry and with the last sliver of will power they have left, pull themselves away to pay $5.99 for a prime rib buffet. AND since there’s no windows in the place these men will stay in your strip club and spend money until you throw them out or they’ve spent every last dime. Oh, and poles are imperative.

On the other hand, there are things that strip club owners are less savvy about. One of these things may be tax compliance. Accordingly, many proprietors find a local accountant, they swap services, everyone wins.


However, every once in awhile this traditional arrangement may run awry. Kevin Moury, owner of Kittens (NSFW), is suing his accountant, Michael Walsh, for negligence in preparing his returns that resulted in “criminal charges, penalties, costs, fines, loss of income, medical expenses, loss of life’s enjoyments, emotional distress and mental anguish.”

Okay, before we continue, we have to ask – “loss of life’s enjoyments” and “medical expenses” because of a CPA? Where do we draw the line people? Next thing you know, accountants will be blamed for the collapse of the entire financial system…

Anyhoo, Moury pleaded guilty in October to “federal charges of falsifying tax returns and failing to report substantial cash income.” He spent one night in jail, got nine months of house arrest and had to pay back taxes of $88k, etc. etc.

This all came up because Moury apparently thought it was a-okay to deposit money from various revenue streams like fining dancers for tardiness or bolting early, massages for customers, and Jell-O shots (you know, the usual stuff) and then not report it as income. Obviously the IRS was not cool with this, prosecutors threatened to go after his wife and daughters (all employees at Kittens, btw) and that got him to plead guilty.

As a result of his guilty plea, Moury lost a sweet $90k/year gig as a “superintendent of environmental management” (which sounds a lot like “boss of the garbage collectors” but whatevs) and this resulted in lost future earnings of $1.3 million, allegeth the lawsuit.

Regardless, this shit ain’t fair and the accountant needs to be held responsible (his attorney the allegations or “groundless”) and Moury’s attorney isn’t shying away from the stupidity defense:

The lawsuit claims Moury’s lack of formal education — he didn’t finish high school and has a high school equivalency certificate — led him to rely on Walsh to accurately report his income and prepare his tax returns.

“Mr. Moury gave his accountant anything and everything for his business, his real estate and the salary from his job with Methuen,” Cote said. “He signed the returns, but did he looked at them? No. Is he responsible? Yes.

Strip club owner blames accountant for his tax woes [Eagle-Tribune]

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One thought on “It’s About to Be Dot-Com Boom 2.0 in Accounting”

  1. Seems like we’re getting a bit ahead of ourselves. Maybe first before we get into “AI is taking over the accounting profession” we should have a tax software that doesn’t suck. I feel like I’m doing a beta test whenever I have to go off the beaten path.

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