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Comment by code4tee | Hacker News Reader

Groupon did something similar. It’s silly and anyone with two brain cells firing sees right though the BS.

Also they want to claim their drivers are not employees but then want to count the full fare as “revenue.” Sigh.

This is one of the reasons I bailed on accounting as a possible study in college. I really liked the idea of accounting for the whole of a massive business and understanding every unit, but most of the advanced stuff ended up being "here's how to get creative and not go to prison over it". Obfuscation over clarification. Really strange profession.

IMO is quite the opposite. Accounting, as "science", is mostly about making sure numbers represent a good view of reality, with a very conservative bias.

Those example are gimmicks set by C management that, while legal, certainly raised a few eyebrows in the accounting dept. Also, having accounting training helps detection BS practices.

Agree with the strange profession. However, to accountants defense: the rules are pretty open and in any industry, most professional insiders easily know most of the loopholes. It's the layman / politician / civil servant that might get fooled because their common sense does not hold up. In the case of Uber, not a single investor will not recognize this.

Where does this go wrong? SME where the accountant has to expect less questions, since there are no professionals watching the stock. That's why banks do their own due diligence (and p2p lending is more risky). Investing in individual stocks based on your reading of an annual report. No way you are more savvy than the leeways an accountant has.

It does seem to fully contradict the notion that driver's are independent contractors if they count the fare as revenue.

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