Audit & Accounting

Retirement is the No. 1 personal financial planning concern, regardless of age, according to an informal survey taken by the American Institute of CPAs at its Personal Financial Planning Conference.The AICPA said that it was a surprised to see that retirement planning is a major concern for career builders - classified as those between the ages of 25 and 34 - who also have the more immediate pressures of education, home buying and debt management following close behind.

Broker/dealer H.D. Vest has teamed with Cannon Financial Institute, a provider of financial services consulting, to provide practice management training to its top 600 advisors. The training sessions are scheduled to take place in Arizona and Texas in May, and the program has been named "Elite Academy." Participants will begin with a single concentrated workshop on "creating a consistent client experience."

Morningstar Investment Services, a registered investment advisor and subsidiary of financial information concern Morningstar Inc., has launched Morningstar Managed Portfolios Select Stock Baskets, a managed account service consisting of customized stock portfolios based on Morningstar indexes and independent equity research.The Morningstar Indexes form the basis of each stock basket's investment composition, and the stock basket is subsequently tailored to suit an investor's specific parameters, including sector and industry exposure, stock restrictions, existing holdings, and personal tax situation. MIS then selects stocks for the portfolio using Morningstar data and research on the stocks within the index.

Following a long period of assimilation, the London-based International Accounting Standards Board has released an exposure draft on accounting principles under International Financial Reporting Standards for the small and midsized sector.The IASB's goal was to provide a simplified, self-contained set of accounting principles that are appropriate for smaller, non-listed companies, but nevertheless based on IFRS - the guidelines developed primarily for listed European Union companies that are now in use or being adopted by 100 different countries around the world. American and EU regulators are currently embroiled in an ongoing convergence project between IFRS and U.S. generally accepted accounting principles.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act brought the tax manager into the financial statement reporting process as never before. As SOX Section 404 internal control certifications were made with respect to each input into the financial statements, it became clear that one of the weakest areas for SOX 404 compliance was accounting for income taxes.Under FASB Statement No. 109, Accounting for Income Taxes, the process of providing for deferred income taxes had become so subjective and subject to differing interpretations that certification of the results was difficult, and comparability across financial statements appeared to be lacking.

After much criticism and debate over the best approach to regulating business, in December the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board proposed a new audit standard for Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 implementation.Concurrently, the Securities and Exchange Commission introduced interpretive guidance for management's assessment of internal control. Both exposure drafts, which solicited feedback through February, promise change through a risk-based approach.

A federal appeals court ruled that the Securities and Exchange Commission overstepped its authority in updating rules governing brokers who offer financial advice.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has scheduled an open meeting on April 3 to consider proposing an auditing standard, “Evaluating Consistency of Financial Statements.”

The International Accounting Standards Board has issued a revised standard on borrowing costs.

I was raised in a medical family, meaning I was exposed to doctors and hospitals from the get go. It was a nice, comfortable atmosphere where none of the three sons was ever concerned about money. My mother never worked and my father did quite well except for stock investments.But in all those years living at home, I wouldn’t think of asking my father how much money he had or what kind of estate he was considering leaving to us kids, or even my mother. It just wasn’t the topic of any dinnertime conversation and my mother certainly never raised it. Actually, she was smart enough to take a portion of her weekly allowance and put it aside in stocks and bonds, and did quite well. Talk about a self-made woman. Without any formal education, she was just street smart about making sure she had her own protection in the event my father’s latest foray in investments went awry. It did once when he was a principal investor in Tucker automobiles but that’s a story for another time.