During conference calls with auditors this week, Securities and Exchange Commission staff said that accountants should be on the lookout for improper selling strategies designed to take advantage of FAS 159, “Fair Value Option.”

A new report from the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board looks to draw some conclusions out of its inspections of approximately 275 audits of internal controls over financial reporting performed by registered public accounting firms.The report specifically looks at the second year implementation of the board’s Auditing Standard No. 2, “An Audit of Internal Control over Financial Reporting Performed in Conjunction with an Audit of Financial Statements.” Nearly a year ago, the PCAOB announced that during 2006 it would conduct inspections to determine whether auditors were achieving the objectives of the standard with the least expenditure of resources.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board issued a proposal to improve the accounting for financial guarantee insurance contracts.The proposal, “Accounting and Reporting by Insurance Enterprises: An Interpretation of FASB Statement No. 60,” is aimed at reducing diversity in accounting treatment and providing financial statement users with clearer, more comparable information and expanded disclosures. The proposal has also been written in a new format intended to improve its understandability.

The climate is changing for nonprofit organizations, with both the Internal Revenue Service and Congress zeroing in on issues such as transparency, board oversight and compensation matters.While Sarbanes-Oxley requirements apply to only the public company sector, the scandals emanating from publicly traded companies over the past several years have affected the nonprofit arena as well, according to Geralyn R. Hurd, an executive in the tax services group at Crowe Chizek's Chicago office.

Like their GOP predecessors, the Democrats in charge of Congressional tax committees continue to wring their hands over the fiscal train wreck looming due to the escalating alternative minimum tax.But agreement on a way to stop that runaway AMT locomotive - a step that many tax accountants say is needed to head off a tax revolt by millions of middle-income American families - seems just as elusive as ever.

Derivatives may be complex instruments, but they nevertheless have to be calculated, accounted for and reported on to investors and other users of financial information.The Financial Accounting Standards Board tried to settle the issue when it issued Statement 133, Accounting for Derivative Instruments and Hedging Activities in 1998, but people who read financial statements still had questions. For example, how do derivatives activities impact a company's operations? And how does a given derivative relate to a given risk?'

New Jersey is working to join a roster of U.S. states that are offering tax breaks to local military personnel, as a state legislator has authored a bill that would exempt income earned by military personnel stationed outside the state for at least six months from the state's gross income tax."I think there's no question that our men and women who are serving in the military are sacrificing a tremendous amount already," said New Jersey Assemblyman Michael Panter, author of the bill. "To tax them from a state perspective, when they're not in New Jersey taking advantage of the state services and infrastructure, really it's a windfall to the state, and I think it's incredibly unfair."