Audit & Accounting

A large number of organizations are expanding their businesses internationally, either growing organically or via mergers and acquisitions. With growth comes change and additional reporting processes, often followed by confusion and delays in the reporting of financial statements.One area that frequently seems to be an issue is the inter-company accounting process.

RESTATEMENTS DECLINED IN 2007Sutton, Mass. — The number of financial restatements fell last year for the first time since 2001, according to a new report.

It’s often said that small business is the engine of the U.S. economy. If so, family businesses are of the high-performance, whisper-quiet, finely tuned kind, humming along at an impressive clip — even if there might be a few bumps ahead. But to stay on track and avoid breakdowns, family businesses would do well to schedule regular tune-ups with their financial professionals.That’s the snapshot of today’s family businesses that emerges from the 2007 Family Business Survey conducted by Massachusetts Mutual Life Insurance Co. in conjunction with the Family Firm Institute, and the Cox Family Enterprise Center at the Kennesaw State University Coles College of Business.

CFP BOARD REVISES ETHICSThe CFP Board of Standards has adopted a revised version of its Standards of Professional Conduct, which sets forth the ethical standards for CFP professionals.

The Treasury Department has released its blueprint for overhauling the regulatory structure of the financial markets in an effort to cope with the crisis in the mortgage and credit markets.

A federal judge has dismissed major parts of a class-action lawsuit brought against tax prep chain Jackson Hewitt and a large group of its franchisees.

Xerox and KPMG have agreed to settle a shareholder lawsuit dating back to 2000 claiming that Xerox manipulated its accounting to inflate its earnings.

R.R. Donnelley & Sons and Edgar Online have launched TryXBRL.com, a Web site that allows users to view and analyze financial statements tagged in Extensible Business Reporting Language from over 12,000 publicly traded companies.

Center for Audit Quality Comments on Treasury Blueprint

This year’s tax return filing season appears to be proceeding smoothly, despite the initial confusion that was generated by the seemingly annual last-minute tax legislation.Included in that flurry of new guidelines were the Tax Increase Prevention Act of 2007, which passed in December and included an Alternative Minimum Tax patch for the year that required some fine-tuning of the Internal Revenue Service’s computers to process returns that might be subject to the AMT; and the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act of 2007, which also passed in December, and excluded mortgage debt forgiveness for homeowners whose home at foreclosure sold for less than the outstanding mortgage, if a portion of the unpaid debt was forgiven. In total, more than 10 forms this season were affected by the AMT patch.