The Supreme Court voted to let stand a ruling against two former executives of Gemstar-TV Guide International, supporting the ability of the Securities and Exchange Commission to freeze payments to executives under federal accounting fraud law.

Refco Inc., the futures broker that removed chairman and chief executive Phillip R. Bennett this week after discovering that a company he controlled owed Refco $430 million, is the target of a Securities and Exchange Commission investigation, according to published reports.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said the former KPMG accountant who oversaw audits of Xerox Corp. will pay a $100,000 fine to settle charges that he failed to disclose accounting violations that came to his attention.

The Streamlined Sales Tax Project, in labor since 2000, officially gave birth on Oct. 1, 2005, when the threshold of 10 states representing at least 20 percent of the population was crossed."There are now 13 full-member states and five more associate states," said SSTP co-chair Scott Peterson, of the South Dakota Department of Revenue and Regulations. The associate-member states are those that have passed the requisite implementing legislation, but where the legislation had not yet gone into effect by October 1.

Following the inevitable rounds of infighting, European Union countries are taking the final steps to enact legislation to bring their auditing standards into line with best international practices as set out by the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board.At press time, the European Parliament was expected to rubber-stamp an upgraded version of the EU's Eighth Directive on statutory auditing, which got through the committee stage in September. The agreed-upon package will be published before the end of the year, leading on to official enactment by the EU national governments.

Repealing the federal estate tax could end up choking off billions of dollars in contributions to charities whose resources have been stretched thin by the Hurricane Katrina relief effort, a top tax policy researcher warned Congress.Testifying on behalf of the Brookings Institution's Tax Policy Center, economist William Gale cited a variety of studies suggesting that "estate tax repeal would reduce charitable bequests by between 22 and 37 percent" - a drop that would drain between $3.6 billion and $6 billion each year from the nation's charities.

Calling the proposal for a "return-free" filing system "flawed" and "dangerous to taxpayers," 14 groups have written the President's Advisory Panel on Tax Reform to urge that it be taken off the table in any final report.While the timetable for a final report has been delayed by Hurricane Katrina relief efforts, with the final two scheduled meetings postponed, the return-free concept is one of the proposals under consideration by the panel.