Audit & Accounting

Federal prosecutors have arrested a New York-based Internal Revenue Service agent on tax fraud charges, according to a published report.Harry Willner, 59, who has been an IRS agent for more than three decades, was charged with five counts of tax fraud on Monday. Federal prosecutors have accused him of cheating on his personal income taxes, as well as offering loopholes to other taxpayers.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said that U.S. rulemakers should consider adopting "principles-based" regulations and accounting standards in a speech at the Capital Markets Competitiveness Conference.Paulson said that in particular, there should be a focus on three issues in the United States -- the country’s regulatory structure, its accounting industry and its legal and corporate governance environment.

Many of the same recommendations keep emerging from report after report -- no matter how nonpartisan or partisan the group.That happened just this week, on some level, with macro comments Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson made in opening a conference on international market competition, as well as with the six pointed recommendations the U.S. Chamber of Commerce offered to Congress and the investment community.

Russian authorities raided the offices of PwC's Russian unit, ZAO PricewaterhouseCoopers Audit, last Friday, in search of new criminal evidence to be used against the firm, which the government suspects of tax evasion, and against bankrupted oil giant OAO Yukos, whose senior executives the government suspects of accounting fraud.

A federal judge has signed off on a $72.5 million settlement between Arthur Andersen and investors who sued the former accounting giant over its role in the financial collapse of former energy giant Enron Corp.

With great anticipation I was awaiting FASB Statement 159, "The Fair Value Option for Financial Assets and Financial Liabilities." I was a bit shocked by it when it came out. Two aspects really bothered me --one, that it is an option, and two, that to a great extent, it can be applied on an instrument-by-instrument basis. I will not go into a discussion of the standard, except for the narratives explaining the dissent of two members of the seven-member of the Financial Accounting Standards Board. Thomas Linsmeier dissents from its issuance because he believes a fair value option generally won’t result in financial reporting that achieves many of the expressed objectives for issuing FASB 159.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce had offered up a number of recommendations for changes to the country’s legal and regulatory framework -- taking aim at Securities and Exchange Commission and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the process.

The Institute of Internal Auditors has hired Luc Lavoie to serve as executive director of its newly established Canadian office.

There is no question that most people appear quite serious about preparing an estate plan that can get passed along to future generations. The intention is all there but too many people still seem to find ways to mess it up entirely.

After two years of compliance with the internal control provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, proxy researcher Glass Lewis & Co. says that public companies are reporting fewer material weaknesses in their internal controls.