Little off topic, but Exxon is big.
As related to me by an Exxon district manager in the mid 80's:
In the late 70's, in order to prepare the way for the "Windfall Profit Tax", the Carter administration wanted to see the real money numbers from the oil companies. Under guise of a full "crawl up your a**" IRS audit, the feds got ready. Exxon was first on the list.
Exxon accomodated by giving the federal audit team (100+ people) an entire floor of one of their office buildings as well as access to all documents the feds requested. The audit team wanted not just end reports, but the raw numbers as well so the accountants could verify everything. Remember this was before the time of PCs, cheap data storage, and the internet. It was the age of paper.
Paperwork/reports/statements came into the office by the truckload, literally. Ton upon ton of paper (and crates of microfiche)quickly piled up. First the audit team was crowded out by the paperwork. Awhile later a structural engineer put a kink in the works by ordering the removal of a vast majority of the paperwork as it's weight was in excess of what the structure was designed for. A warehouse was procured for document storage, a warehouse that was soon packed to the rafters.
After 6 months the feds simply gave up as they did not have the resources available to do the job. The fed supervisor in charge of the fiasco said, "Never again. These guys are just too dam*ed big for us to audit."
As related to me by an Exxon district manager in the mid 80's:
In the late 70's, in order to prepare the way for the "Windfall Profit Tax", the Carter administration wanted to see the real money numbers from the oil companies. Under guise of a full "crawl up your a**" IRS audit, the feds got ready. Exxon was first on the list.
Exxon accomodated by giving the federal audit team (100+ people) an entire floor of one of their office buildings as well as access to all documents the feds requested. The audit team wanted not just end reports, but the raw numbers as well so the accountants could verify everything. Remember this was before the time of PCs, cheap data storage, and the internet. It was the age of paper.
Paperwork/reports/statements came into the office by the truckload, literally. Ton upon ton of paper (and crates of microfiche)quickly piled up. First the audit team was crowded out by the paperwork. Awhile later a structural engineer put a kink in the works by ordering the removal of a vast majority of the paperwork as it's weight was in excess of what the structure was designed for. A warehouse was procured for document storage, a warehouse that was soon packed to the rafters.
After 6 months the feds simply gave up as they did not have the resources available to do the job. The fed supervisor in charge of the fiasco said, "Never again. These guys are just too dam*ed big for us to audit."
