The Securities and Exchange Commission has awarded a trio of contracts totaling $54 million to transform the financial statements in its Edgar database into interactive information.Included in that strategy was some $5.5 million earmarked for XBRL US Inc. to complete the writing of XBRL taxonomies, so that every item in a company's financial statement, such as net income or gross sales, can be assigned a unique, computer-readable label.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board will delay implementation for one part of a rule relating to professionals who provide both tax and audit services to companies.Adopted in July 2005, Rule 3523, “Tax Services for Persons in Financial Reporting Oversight Roles,” went into effect on Oct. 31. The rule prohibits auditors from providing tax services to certain members of management who serve in financial reporting oversight roles at an audit client.

H&R Block Inc. said that it will provide better and more transparent notification to customers detailing all the costs tied to its refund anticipation loans.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed and settled financial fraud charges against Delphi Corp. and six of the auto parts supplier’s former employees -- including the company’s former chief accounting officer.The SEC charged the company with engaging in a variety of accounting schemes and making material financial misstatements between 2000 and 2004, all resulting in a series of restatements totaling more than $200 million. Delphi settled the charges of financial fraud without admitting or denying the allegations, and no financial penalty was levied against the company.

Intuit Inc. announced that the Securities and Exchange Commission has closed its investigation into the software maker's stock option accounting practices without taking any punitive action.The SEC began its Intuit inquiry in June and in August, Intuit announced that based on its internal investigation of the handling of its stock options dating back to 1997, it wouldn’t need to restate past profits.

Initially, my column was only going to cover that a day after former Enron CEO Jeffrey Skilling was sentenced to 24 plus years, the SEC announced it settled civil fraud charges involving options backdating. The agreement provides for the payment of nearly $2.4 million in disgorgement and prejudgment interest, a permanent injunction, a permanent officer-and-director bar, and suspension from appearing or practicing before the Commission as an accountant.The SEC had charged the former CFO of Comverse Technology, Inc., David Kreinberg and two other former Comverse executives with engaging over many years in a fraudulent scheme to grant undisclosed in-the-money options to themselves and to others by backdating stock option grants to coincide with historically low closing prices of Comverse common stock. The SEC also alleged that Kreinberg and Comverse's former chairman and CEO created a slush fund of backdated options that the former Chairman and CEO used to recruit and retain key personnel.

To assist governments and other public sector entities in appropriately accounting for the costs of employee benefits, a board within the International Federation of Accountants has issued an exposure draft of a new standard.The International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board’s exposure draft No. 31, “Employee Benefits,” is based on the the International Accounting Standard No. 19, of the same name. The draft addresses the same categories of employee benefits -- short-term employee benefits, post-employment benefits, other long-term employee benefits and termination benefits.