A college student decides she wants to become an accountant. General accounting

and bookkeeping classes can be taken in high school. In college, the student needs to

decide on a more specific field of accounting. An accountant has many choices as to

what particular field of accounting to specialize in depending on the financial

information she wants to analyze and how it is done. Financial accountants, tax

accountants and internal auditors are all accountants in general, but require different

training and work methods. A financial accountant records economic data and

periodically prepares reports that show profit and other financial information of a

company using the generally accepted accounting principles. The reports prepared by

the accountant are useful for managers, and also for owners, creditors and the public.

Based on information in the reports the public can use the reports to choose a

company to invest in. Because a financial accountant is employed by an individual

company, she is considered a private accountant. Another type of accountant is a tax

accountant. A tax accountant prepares yearly tax returns for individual clients. The

accountants have to use constant data such as rates of pay and other information to

determine the proper amount of taxes to be paid. These accountants have to take a

class once a year to catch up on yearly changes in tax laws and regulations. If a tax

accountant has met state experience requirements, she may want to take exams to

become a Certified Public Accountant (CPA).

So, an accountant has career choices to make based on more specialized interests in a

field, and as with other careers, a different specialization will have different educational

requirements. Different classes will need to be taken in order to gain enough knowledge

in the general field and several classes on a similar topic when the accountant decides

what to specialize in. Accounting may not seem like a popular profession, or a very

interesting one, but once one looks deep into the separate activities and training of

each specialization, on can see that accounting may appeal to many different types of

people for many different reasons.

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