“Why did the chicken cross the road?”/“To get to the other side” is a classic riddle from the 19th century. An accountant version is:
   
Q: Why did the accountant cross the road?
A: Because he looked up the file and saw that’s what they did last year.
   
“Q. Why did the accountant cross the road? A. Because he did the same last year” was posted on the newsgroup eunet.jokes on January 18, 1994.
 
Similar accountant riddles include “Why did the accountant cross the road?”/“So he could claim it on his travel expenses” and “Why did the accountant cross the road?”/“To bore the people on the other side.”
   
   
Google Groups: eunet.jokes
Where are the accounting jokes?
Dr Kevin J Woolley
1/18/94
Q. Why did the accountant cross the road?
A. Because he did the same last year.
   
Google Groups: rec.humor
Why did the chicken cross the street?
Menachem Bazian
6/11/96
(...)
Why did the accountant cross the road?
Because that’s the way it was done last year!
   
18 November 1998, The Independent (London, UK), “People and Business: The Bar loses at Cluedo” by John Willcock, pg. 25:
QUESTION: WHY did the accountant cross the road?
Answer: Because he looked up the file and saw that’s what they did last year.
     
Twitter
Adam Ripperdan
@AdamRipperdan
Why did the accountant cross the road?...Well, thats what they did last year.
11:44 AM · Aug 22, 2009·Twitter Web Client
 
Google Books
The Jelly Effect:
How to Make Your Communication Stick
By Andy Bounds
Chichester, West Sussex, UK: Capstone Publishing
2010
Pg. 88:
Question: Why did the accountant cross the road?
Answer: Because he did it last year.
   
Business Insider
25 Jokes That Only Accountants Will Find Funny
Libby Kane May 19, 2014, 12:23 PM
(...)
10. Why did the accountant cross the road? Because she looked in the files and did what they did last year.
   
Google Books
The 1 % Solution:
A Mystic’s Tale
By Stuart Welch
Lulu Press (Lulu.com)
2015
Pg. 162:
He had tried lines like “Why did the Accountant cross the road: Because when he looked in the file, that is what they did last year.”
 
Reddit—Accounting
Posted by u/DDM201 February 7, 2017
Why did the accountant cross the road?
So he could utilize his allowable travel expenses.
COMMENTS
J1001 CPA (US)
The correct answer is “because he did it last year.”
       
4 January 2018, Telegraph-Herald (Dubuque, IA), “More on taxes” by Ken Brown, pg. A7:
“We don’t have a lot of jokes in accounting,” Wagner said, “but one we do have is ‘Why did the accountant cross the road? Because he looked in the file and he crossed the road last year.’”
 
Twitter
Dorrell Oliver
@DorrellOliver
Replying to @sageuk
Why did the Accountant cross the road?
Because that’s what he did last year!
12:41 PM · May 14, 2019·Twitter for iPhone