Audit & Accounting

More than 28 percent of large public companies are not fully meeting disclosure requirements for tax reserve estimates, according to a new report.

The Governmental Accounting Standards Board issued for comment a proposed technical bulletin to help government accountants determine the annual required contribution for post-employment benefits.

While in India with an accountant and his client, I observed a classic “trusted advisor” moment. The client is the chief executive of one of the largest family-owned businesses in India. As an aside during our meeting, the CEO mentioned to his accountant that he would be going to Tokyo on a Thursday for some negotiations with the company’s most important potential business partner. The CEO would then be returning on Friday morning, little more than 24 hours after his arrival. The accountant listened carefully to the plan and said simply: “No. You will not come home Friday. You will instead spend the weekend in Tokyo with the executives of the other business.”Without hesitation, the CEO lifted his cell phone and said to his secretary: “Please change my return flight to Monday morning.”

Grant Thornton took first place in Public Accounting Report's second-quarter audit rankings, the first time one of the Big Four audit firms didn't get the top spot for the quarterly rankings.

After a storm of protest from banking interests against the principle of booking asset values at a forced exit price for fear of a potential downward spiral in asset values, bankers in the European Union have eased their position on the fair value principle.Following a meeting held at the European Parliament Financial Services Forum here, banks are finally warming to the fair value platform with discussions on mark-to-model techniques for evaluating assets in illiquid markets.

Accounting for hedging activities has never been easy, but by year’s end, if a proposal from the Financial Accounting Standards Board meets approval, it might get a little simpler.FASB has proposed an amendment to Statement 133, Accounting for Derivative Instruments and Hedging Activities. The proposed statement, Accounting for Hedging Activities, issued as an exposure draft, would eliminate most of the many methods of hedge accounting. The result: financial statements that are simpler, more transparent and more comparable.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has adopted rules requiring audit firms to submit reports at least once a year on fees, disciplinary actions and other information that will be posted on its Web site.Each of the more than 1,800 public accounting firms registered with the PCAOB must provide basic information about audit reports issued during the year and the disciplinary history of people who have joined the firm during that time. They must also report information about fees billed to audit clients in various categories of services as a percentage of the firm’s total fees billed.

The proposed regulations on preparer penalties, released on June 17, are the latest iteration of rules that tax practitioners should consider carefully when recommending and executing tax strategies. Not heeding them can result in stiff penalties or, worse, the loss of the right to continue to practice tax law and serious damage to a firm’s reputation in the client community.The simple reality is that those responsible for recommending prospective tax strategies are almost always drawn back into the matter by the signing return preparer once the transaction is completed. They are asked about tax benefit matters what was intended and whether things turn out as expected. That after-the-fact advice is enough to subject the practitioner to the label “return preparer” for purposes of the preparer penalties.

In a significant step toward more solid and relevant accounting standards around the world, the International Accounting Standards Board and the Financial Accounting Standards Board have rolled out two joint discussion documents that may indicate where the boards are going in their project to improve and converge their conceptual frameworks.One document, The Objective of Financial Reporting and Qualitative Characteristics and Constraints of Decision-Useful Financial Reporting Information, is a proposal for the first two chapters of the framework. The other is a preliminary views document that suggests directions the board might take on defining the reporting entity.

In this third installment in our Mythbusters series (with credit to the Discovery Channel show, MythBusters), we turn to the oft-repeated but seldom-scrutinized notion that reporting values in financial statements creates volatility.This idea has been in the spotlight because of the recent financial crisis, with one myth-monger after another blaming the Financial Accounting Standards Board and anyone but themselves for financial institutions’ crashing stock prices. They say that mark-to-market accounting made it look like these entities were going into the tank. How much better it would be, they said, if the collateralized debt obligations were just carried at their cost so things wouldn’t look so bad. And if they didn’t look so bad, we’d all be better off.