Audit & Accounting

A new industry group is looking to make inroads in building support for its policy positions in Washington.The Center for Audit Quality will focus on topics such as auditor protection from lawsuits, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and how companies report financial information.

Like many other businesses, we annually welcome a new crop of recent college and graduate school graduates into our organization.Every relationship with a new employee begins with optimism. We tell them we hope they will build a career at the Deloitte U.S. firms. They tell us they want to do just that. But amid this jolly collegiality, one truth usually remains unspoken - we all know that somewhere along the line some of these new employees will dust off their résumés and look for work elsewhere. We have decided that being honest about that fact is essential to keeping American businesses like ours strong and competitive as the demographics of employment shift.

Back in the late 1990s, this column criticized those who supported pooling-of-interests accounting for business combinations. We called it "pfooling" because it was designed to trick the capital markets into believing false financial statements.Eventually, the Financial Accounting Standards Board did eliminate pooling, although it was unwilling or unable to do anything about the misleading information produced by past poolings through retroactive application. Those bad numbers will hang around for decades, making the affected statements much less useful.

Everybody knows that taxes are a drag on performance, but I am constantly surprised at the number of investors who blithely pay taxes each year on their investment earnings without considering the impact on accumulation or the alternative strategies that they could employ.It's never a good idea to let the tail wag the dog, of course - a rational investor shouldn't seek tax avoidance, or tax minimization per se. But it makes sense to pursue the highest after-tax return.

ONLY 51% READY FOR FISCAL CRISISResults from the fourth annual "financial fitness" survey conducted by Quicken revealed that only 51 percent of consumers were prepared for a financial emergency or had an emergency fund in the event of accident or illness.

LogicalApps, a provider of embedded governance software, announced that it has acquired the Integra product line from Applimation, a provider of management consulting and software for businesses using Oracle and PeopleSoft applications.

The Deloitte Foundation, a not-for-profit arm of Deloitte & Touche, announced the 2007 recipients of fellowship grants through the organization’s doctoral fellowship program.

Fitch Ratings has released its annual outlook of issues it expects to continue having an impact on the accounting profession in the coming year.

The Internal Revenue Service may not reach the 80 percent e-filing goal for the 2007 fiscal year set by Congress in 1998, but it continues to advance with the help of improved technology, wider perception of its benefits, and both state and federal mandates for taxpayers and preparers.Last year, more than 73 million tax returns were filed electronically - nearly 54 percent of all tax returns - while the Free File Alliance, a partnership between the IRS and software vendors, continues to help drive taxpayers toward e-filing, serving about 4 million individuals last year. This year, the program has been expanded, with 70 percent of taxpayers - those with an adjusted gross income of $52,000 or less - now eligible.

The odds are looking better for Senate approval of legislation to increase the minimum wage, but reconciling that bill with a House version - which contains no tax breaks for businesses - figures to take some negotiating.Senate debate on the bill ended in late January with an 87-10 vote, and final Senate passage of the bill was expected in early February.