Audit & Accounting

The Internal Revenue Service announced cost-of-living adjustments on the dollar limitations for pension plans and other items in tax year 2009, even as Social Security benefits are expected to rise next year.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board is considering delaying implementation of its controversial standard on accounting for uncertainty in income taxes for private entitiies.

The International Accounting Standards Board and its U.S. counterpart, the Financial Accounting Standards Board, plan to create a global advisory group to review financial reporting issues related to the credit crisis.

Accounting firm LarsonAllen has combined with yet another firm - Davis, Keller and Wiggins - expanding its presence in the St. Louis area and its automobile dealership client base.

The tax shelter trial of three former KPMG executives and an outside attorney began in a New York courtroom Wednesday, but with most of the original defendants no longer present.

The Center for Audit Quality, the CFA Institute, the Council of Institutional Investors and the Consumer Federation of America have written to the Securities and Exchange Commission opposing demands for the SEC to override the Financial Accounting Standards Board's rules on fair value accounting.

Former Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Arthur Levitt blamed recent SEC actions for contributing to the credit crisis and urged legislators to expand fair value accounting.

The federal government plans to spend $250 billion to buy equity stakes in troubled banks to help them weather the credit crisis.

A New Jersey jury has awarded a company nearly $32 million after it sued KPMG for negligence; with interest, the verdict amounts to over $41 million.

Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., and his rival Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., have proposed differing tax and retirement plan measures to deal with the economic downturn.