WebCPA Staff

The economic downturn has raised the profile of senior executives worldwide, with CFOs becoming more involved in developing business strategy and the prioritizing risk management.

A new guidebook aims to help companies mitigate the risks of spreadsheets being misused for corporate fraud or causing multimillion-dollar reporting errors.

Private sector employment decreased by 473,000 last month, according to payroll figures from ADP, but the pace of job losses seems to be easing up compared to earlier in the year.

Eleven defendants have been charged in a massive scheme to file fraudulent tax returns using the stolen identities of Puerto Rican residents in an attempt to collect more than $18 million in tax refunds.

CBIZ has acquired EAO Consultants, an employee benefits firm also known as Egan, Amato & O’Connor, expanding the accounting provider’s benefits-consulting expertise in the Northeast.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has officially launched its FASB Accounting Standards Codification, an online interactive research tool that will serve as the single source of authoritative nongovernmental U.S. generally accepted accounting principles.

KPMG LLP has named Chris Housman as a new partner in the U.S. firm’s International Corporate Services practice.

The House Education and Labor Committee has approved a bill that would require 401(k) plan providers to provide clear, complete information about the fees they charge.

Harriette Walters, the former tax office manager for the District of Columbia, was sentenced to 17 and a half years in prison for masterminding a tax scam estimated to have cost the district $48.1 million.

Deloitte & Touche has conducted a review for the Royal Canadian Mint to try to account for a $15.3 million discrepancy between a rolling inventory and a physical count of gold owned by the mint and its customers, and Goldfinger is apparently not to blame.

H&R Block saw its first profitable year in four years, after the tax prep giant shed its money-losing mortgage operation.

E-mail newsletter provider BizActions has introduced an Online Tax Guide that CPAs can link to from their own Web sites and brand with their own firm’s name and logo.

National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson plans to make oversight of tax return preparers one of her office’s main priorities in the coming fiscal year.

The Obama administration has sent legislation to Capitol Hill to create a new Consumer Financial Protection Agency.

The IRS has excluded pay-for-performance success payments made under the federal government’s new Home Affordable Modification Program from counting as income.

Victims of recent storms in Alabama and Missouri and wildfires in Oklahoma may qualify for tax relief from the IRS.

A UBS client and chartered accountant has pleaded guilty to filing a false tax return for his 2004 taxes in the latest sign of the IRS’s stepped-up enforcement efforts against the Swiss bank’s U.S. customers.

AccuFund has upgraded its financial reporting software for nonprofit, municipal and government organizations with new features for budget development, allocations and financial reports.

Adaptive Planning has released version 6.0 of its eponymous product, with new multidimensional business financial planning features and integration with NetSuite.

Former investment manager Bernard Madoff was sentenced to the maximum term of 150 years in prison for running a Ponzi scheme estimated to have totaled $65 billion.