Section 7216, a part of the Internal Revenue Code since 1971, imposes criminal penalties on tax return preparers who knowingly or recklessly make unauthorized disclosures or uses of information furnished in connection with the preparation of an income tax return.A violation of the section is not to be taken lightly — it comes with a penalty of up to a year’s imprisonment or a fine of not more than $1,000, or both.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has issued an invitation to comment on how it might proceed toward simplifying the measurement of complex financial instruments.The invitation comes amid a global controversy over whether current reporting on some financial instruments at fair value may be causing volatility in securities and credit markets. The issue at FASB, however, is over the perplexing varieties of measurement.

Deloitte has formed an International Financial Reporting Standards University Consortium to help bring IFRS into more college classrooms.

The Securities and Exchange Commission voted at an open meeting to propose that companies begin filing financial statements in an interactive tagged format as early as next year.

Nearly 75 percent of CFOs and senior comptrollers have no experience using International Financial Reporting Standards, while 55 percent are unfamiliar with the Extensible Business Reporting Language, according to a new survey by Grant Thornton.

With so many accounting standards, it can be hard to keep up with them all.

With convergence to a single set of global accounting rules an inevitability as opposed to a possibility, it’s up to standards setters and regulators to put forth guidelines that are not only the best that can be written, but also ones that shed unnecessary complexity.