Did you see the Barbie movie? In the movie, Barbie's creator Ruth Handler makes an off-hand mention of her IRS problems — but that’s wrong.
The real-life Ruth Handler ran into legal issues with the SEC, not the IRS. And it wasn’t tax problems. The Securities and Exchange Commission came after the Barbie creator for financial fraud while she was president of Mattel.
ABC News says, “In 1971, Mattel was in talks to purchase Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus. Mattel executives falsified invoices, bills, even customer signatures to paint a rosier picture of the company's finances.”
Handler pleaded no contest to mail fraud charges and making false statements to the SEC. She had to step down from her role as president at Mattel but continued to publicly maintain her innocence while avoiding jail time.
So why did the movie mention the IRS and not the SEC? Maybe the writers figured most Americans know the IRS better than the SEC. Or maybe they thought the audience would be more sympathetic to a character with tax problems versus financial fraud charges.
Either way, Ruth Handler was a trailblazer. Not only was she a female executive in the 1930s who created one of the best-known brands in the world — but she also fought and won against a powerful government agency, eventually repairing her reputation enough to return to Mattel in 1994.
You can hear my full coverage of this story on a Episode 343 of The Accounting Podcast.
