Page 1 |
Previous | 1 of 3 | Next |
|
This page
All
Subset
|
As everybody knows, or soon finds out, there is a youthful vigor about the Pacific Northwest. Though ancient Mount Rainier dominates the landscape and members of honorable old Indian tribes still linger close by, they are reminders of newness and fast growth. Seattle is the youngest of the big cities on the West Coast. As recently as 1906, when the first public accounting office was opened in the city, Seattle was still the brash capital of a vast frontier stretching all the way to Alaska. The Klondike gold rush in 1897 had established it as the center of an expanding empire within a republic. Today, with the population of its metropolitan area well over one million, it is the industrial and cultural center as well. Much of the character of the Seattle Office has been set by its environment. Haskins & Sells was the second national public accounting firm to open an office in Seattle. In 47 years of service to the community, it has grown up with the city and with the people who are today its leaders. This may help to explain the fact that among our clients are the prestigious clubs of the city: Inglewood Country Club, The Rainier Club, Seattle Golf Club, Seattle Tennis Club, and the Washington Athletic Club. It may also explain in part the size and strength of our tax practice. In relation to total office practice, it is one of the largest in Haskins & Sells. Eight of our 42 professional accountants are assigned full time to our Tax Department, which with its wealth of experience takes an active part in the job of training tax specialists for the Firm as a whole. Events sometimes take shape rapidly in Seattle, and a swelling civic spirit suddenly made the city host to the 1962 World's Fair. Probably none of the thousands of opening-day visitors suspected that some of our men were on hand as "peelers," pressed into service for our client, the World's Fair Corporation, to help gather excess cash from the ticket booths and place it in depositories controlled by another client, Loomis Armored Car Service, Inc. Nor could many spectators enjoying the view from the top of the Space Needle, still another client, have guessed at the complexities we encountered in studying the depreciation problems of the 600-foot shaft and its revolving restaurant, the Eye of the Needle. Our experience as auditors for the Fair has enabled us to appreciate its evolution into a permanent scientific, cultural, and entertainment complex, where the city now enjoys year-around facilities for sports events, opera, symphony, and repertory theater. The staff of the Seattle Office has many first-hand opportunities to study the elements of the Pacific Northwest economy at close quarters and to understand what makes its wheels turn. We are well represented in the great industries of the region—in timber and forest products, water power, orchards, and aluminum, to cite a few that provide some fascinating experience for the staff accountant. For instance, it may tax his professional aplomb when, after stepping from a seaplane to a raft of logs, he teeters on the verge of falling into the chilly salt water. We have other good vantage points from which to view the whole economy as auditors of the Seattle Chamber of Commerce and of a number of the region's newspapers and radio-TV stations, among them the OFFICE PROFILE: Seattle by Dale R. Schmid, Senior Accountant, Seattle 13