The Internal Revenue Service has issued Notice 2005-88, which explains steps that large corporations and tax-exempt organizations can take to seek waivers from electronic filing requirements.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board will add a new project to its agenda and reconsider its accounting guidance for pensions and other retirement benefits.

Bond insurer MBIA Inc. will restate its earnings for the past seven years, as well as set aside $75 million in anticipation of settling with regulators over an accounting probe into defaulted bonds.

Securities and Exchange Commission deputy chief accountant Andrew D. Bailey Jr. will leave the commission in December.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board is closing in on a proposed new audit standard governing engagement quality reviews by accounting firms.That standard, which appears on track to be advanced during 2006, is part of an ambitious agenda of audit standard-setting activities for the coming year that was outlined by PCAOB staffers during a recent meeting of the board's Standing Advisory Group.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has issued another exposure draft on accounting for earnings per share, adding what may be the final tweaks to an amendment of Statement 128.The revised edition has few changes from the original ED that was issued in December 2003, but the board considered at least one change - it involves amending the computational guidance for calculating the number of incremental shares included in diluted shares when applying the treasury stock method - to be substantive enough to require another exposure draft for public comment.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt created the Securities and Exchange Commission to protect the country's investors. The SEC went on to create the Financial Accounting Standards Board to give investors standardized financial reports.And now FASB has taken the next step toward investor protection by establishing an Investor Task Force.