Bean counter

Bean counter is a negative term that can be used to describe people who are accountants or otherwise responsible for financial matters.
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Word of the Day: Bean counter

Bean counter is a negative term for people who are accountants or otherwise responsible for the details of financial matters.


When someone wants to make an investment or spend company money, but it’s not approved, they often blame the bean counters.

Al Capone was an infamous Chicago gangster in the 1920s.

The police were unable to convict him of any major crimes, but eventually, the bean counters (tax officials) caught him for tax evasion.

As they say, the devil is in the details, and accountants are very good at them.

You may say it is a good thing for society, and you may be right.

But many people liked Al Capone back then, and both Capone and those people would have considered the tax officials the enemy.

When I think about it, even today many people do not like tax officials and continue to refer to them in a derogatory way as bean counters.


This post is understandable by someone with at least an 8th-grade education (age 13 – 14).  

On the Flesch-Kincaid reading-ease test, this post scores 61.  

The easier a passage is to read, the higher the score on a scale of 0 – 100.



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