PITFALLS OF ACCOUNTANCY 21 



lated them a half dozen different ways with as 

 many different net results. Then I took the figures 

 to town and had my treasurer, who is an expert 

 accountant, see what he could make of them. He 

 reached a result undreamed of in my figuring. So 

 we took the data to our C. P. A. His findings in 

 no way resembled either mine or the treasurer's. 

 We finally agreed to call the ensuing debate off 

 on the grounds that any one of us might be right; 

 and that as long as we were all on the right side 

 of the ledger it did not matter a great deal. 



Which reminds me to explain how it is that 

 when my rent is $1329 a year I only have to pay 

 $689 of it per year. Well, the Federal Department 

 of Agriculture, with that phenomenal ingenuity 

 for figuring heads-I-win-tails-you-lose fashion com- 

 monly esteemed the peculiar gift and province of 

 the Internal Revenue Bureau has succeeded in in- 

 terpreting that which many consider an operating 

 expense, as income. The Department made a study 

 of a group of Maryland farms, to determine how 

 much income-in-kind they contributed to their 

 owners. The experts defined interest on the own- 

 er's equity in his property as the property's con- 

 tribution toward the owner's total rent. Maybe 

 that is right; I am not an expert and would not 

 know. All I know is that $640 is the interest on 

 my equity in Medlock Farm, and that if I had 

 not put the principal where it is when I did, the 



