Exploring Life & Business with James Bellon of Bellon Company Accountants

Today we’d like to introduce you to James Bellon.

Hi James, can you start by introducing yourself? We’d love to learn more about how you got to where you are today.
I am living a gifted life. When I was ten, I was sleeping in the front seat of a new Cadillac moving down a four-lane highway when the driver rear-ended another auto that was turning left. I went through the windshield and then back into the car. Mom said that I had lost so much blood that they didn’t think I would live until morning. The next day I heard myself talking and it woke me up. I was receiving my last rights from a priest. His next words were, ‘Do you have anything else to say.’ Gads, I thought, what did I already tell him? I said, “No.” And he said, “In the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” That was the first time I could have passed on. I won’t tell you about the rest of them.

In the eighth grade, I decided that I would like to be an architect. For art class, I build a 1/100 scale model prison that was single-story, round like a pie with a glass dome roof. In high school, I took one year of mechanical drafting and three years of architectural drafting. After graduating, I took a labor job at our local GM plant. The Viet Nam war had just started, and you could get a deferral from the draft if you were going to college. I tried getting a job drafting at local architectural firms and home construction firms to no avail. Since the eighth grade I wanted to go to college but now I was caught between the old rock and a hard place and was in need of a career change.

One day, as working second shift gave me time off to take care of some business downtown, I met Ellen, whom I had just graduated with. We were standing on the corner of Center and Madison in Bay City, Michigan. I asked Ellen what she was doing, and she told me she was working at a CPA firm. I asked her if they made money and she said, “Does the bear….”. Never mind. One block away on the corner of Sixth and Madison was the Northeastern School of Commerce. I could see the sign from where we were standing. I walked over there and signed up for a four-year degree as Accounting Major. GM paid for two years of it.

This is an interesting story:

I was a junior at Ferris State College and was cutting through the Student Commons on my way to my next class when I saw Mike, a Liberal Arts student who lived in the same rental unit off campus as I did, sitting on the floor with a bunch of other fellas. I stopped and said, “What’s going on Mike?” Not feeling comfortable standing over the top of him while we spoke, I sat down for a moment next to him. He said that they were protesting in solidarity with the race riots that were going on in Detroit. Just then about seven men in trench coats came in and started taking pictures of us. My time was up as I had to get to class. Said bye to Mike and never thought a thing about it for a couple of years.

Now I am a senior at Ferris with six weeks until graduation. I’m doing job interviews with the Big Eight accounting firms, governments, and large businesses. So, one day a man in a trench coat came into my classroom and asked for me; asked if I would mind going with him. I said, “No problem” and we went on down to the Dean of Housing’s office. Once there the dean told me that I had to move onto campus. I said, “What? I’m a senior. Seniors do not have to live on campus. I have six weeks to go and my rent is paid for four of them. No, I will not move onto campus.”

He said, “Are your refusing to move onto campus?” I said, “Yes” and he said, “Thanks”. And that was the end of it except it was very puzzling to me. Also puzzling was the fact that I didn’t get a job offer in spite of having very good grades. Just aced my CPA problems class without cracking a book for twelve weeks.

My friends told me I need to join a branch in the service or else I was going to get drafted as Viet Nam was really heating up in 1970. I missed the cue and ended up in the draft that month. I pulled number 209, and they drafted up to 206. You only had to be in the draft once.

I was free with a degree but still, those puzzles kept coming back to me. Why didn’t I get a job offer? Why the trench coat guy took me to the Dean’s? One day the light went on and I had it.

Ferris was a strict school back then. If you got caught drinking by the police, you were canned out of school. So, what happened was when the campus police reviewed those pictures from the Student Commons with me sitting next to Mike, they thought I was a protester and they wanted to make it hard on me. So, they knew I would refuse to move onto campus which would give them a right to put me on Social Probation which showed up on your school record that they were handing out to the companies that I was interviewing. Wham! The pieces fit together but still no accounting job.

On with Life.

I went out to California, down into Arizona, and up into Colorado; ran out of money in Colorado Springs. Spent a dime on a newspaper and another one on a phone call; the guy said I could start Monday morning and the job location was in the Broadmoor right about where I was. So, I just stayed put until the crew showed up Monday morning and we started setting forms for concrete foundations. I took right to it because I could read blueprints, so the boss offered me a place to stay out on his ranch.

Soon I became foreman, and all was going well until January when the worst snowstorm in years hit the Springs. It shut everything down, but I needed a job. So, I went to the friendly Unemployment Office. When they found out I had a degree in accounting they sent me down the street to an interview with Tony Villa to prepare income tax returns.

Tony said, ‘Jim you are qualified for the job; take these eight sheets of type written dialogue home, memorize them and be back Monday at 9:00 AM. Oh, and get a haircut’.

Well, I walked out of that door happy and sad; happy for the job and sad because I was really going to miss my shoulder-length, dusty blonde hair. And then a great idea popped into my head. The first beauty shop I came to set me up with a short-haired wig. All went well for the first two months. We worked seven days a week from 9 AM to about 11 PM. They brought us sandwiches for lunch and supper. We never left the desk.

Then one Friday night as I was finishing up about midnight, I took my pile of finished returns back to the girls that were doing the proofing in the back room and noticed that they were scrambling to get the pile. I asked about that and found out that I made the fewest mistakes of all the accountants. We used to prepare the returns by pencil. When they were proofed out there were photocopies made for the client, Federal and State governments.

I was getting comfortable talking with the girls and figuring that the boss had already gone home; with my head aching from wearing that wig for fifteen hours I just took it off and let my hair down. It felt really good until Tony, the boss, walked into the workroom. He stared at me, and I stared at him as I was thinking, ‘well, that was a pretty nice job.’ Then Tony got a smile on his face and said, “If you can fool me, you can fool my clients.” We became better friends then before.

After April 15th he kept laid off the other tax preparers and kept me on until May. Later that year he called me on the phone back in Michigan to ask me if I would like to work with him again. He offered to sell me half of his rather large tax practice also. He saw something in me that I couldn’t see. That really motivated me to start my own business in my hometown.

So, for the 1973 income tax season, I prepared tax returns for my friends and family at their homes or on my kitchen table. Calculators were very expensive back then so for the 1974 season I bought a large, beaded abacus and learned how to use it. I wish I still had that darned thing; it was really cool.

After taking my Federal Taxation class in college, I decided that was one facet of accounting that I wanted nothing to do with. The reason was because I realized that the Federal Tax Code was so large that no one person really understood all of it and that I didn’t want to work in a field where I couldn’t wrap my understanding around all of it. And guess what? A lot of other accounting majors didn’t want to work in that field either and still don’t. That is part of the reason why there was an opening when I went to the unemployment office in Colorado Springs.

But I stuck with the profession; didn’t look to the right or to the left but straight ahead. I built understanding year after year. Somewhere around 1986 I wrote the Enrolled Agents examination and passed it on the first attempt. Only 30% of the exam takers can do that. It is a two-day, sixteen-hour written test on the Internal Revenue Code. In comparison, the CPA exam only contains a four-hour section comprised of taxation and law; so less than four hours of taxation testing which means that generally beginning Enrolled Agents are more proficient at tax law than CPAs.

I wanted to be an architect but when I found that door closed, I looked around and saw the business college sign and made a career decision in one instant and stuck with it in spite of what the college did to me. That is the key; stick with it. Don’t let anyone or anything put your fire out.

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
We are an S-Corporation registered in the State of Michigan.

We do Income Tax and Accounting which comprises organizing companies into the right entity of choice, keeping their General Ledger, and processing their payroll needs.

I don’t know what we are known for. I think we are known for being honest and doing what we say we are going to do; for knowing my ways through various governments and knowing how to structure businesses to save my clients money through lowering their tax obligations.

I have much more experience in this business line than the average tax accountant. It’s sad to say but I have been doing this business for fifty years now. Had my first child when I was forty and the last one fifteen years later. They say that I’m a late bloomer. In my downtime after college, I managed a health food co-op for several years. In that, I learned how to be healthy. People think that I am ten to twenty years younger than I am because of the way I look and feel.

I’m not really proud about what we do. I do it because people need help and that is why we are here isn’t it; to help others along the way. I’m not in competition with other accountants; I want them to succeed. I feel terrible when one of our local accountants pass away or retires.

Can you talk to us a bit about the role of luck?
Well, my friend, the way that I see it there is really no such thing as luck. I see gifts, opportunity, open doors, closed doors, hard work and slothfulness, experiments that work and those that don’t, failures we create, and failures others create for us that we should learn from. Luck has nothing to do with that. We have a creator God, and His name is YaHoVah, He who was and is and is to come. The manual that He gave us to live by contains many, many promises of prosperity. If you do this, then I will do that; Mount Ebal and Mount Gerizim. His promises are true. He is not a God that He should lie. 

Contact Info:

• Address: Bellon Company Accountants 1001 N. Johnson Street Bay City, Michigan 48708
• Telephone: 989-893-5215