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CALIFORNIA

Will Rogers once remarked that as far as investments went, he was far more interested in the return of his money than the return on his money.

The professional liability insurance marketplace for accountants is continuing to soften, according to most of the nation’s providers.“It’s very similar to where we were last year,” explained Bill Thompson, chief executive of Alachua, Fla.-based CPA Mutual Insurance Co. of America. “We’re waiting to see how the subprime issues affect the market, but so far we haven’t experienced anything. We believe there will be an uptick in class-action suits that are subprime-related, but we haven’t seen any in our book.”

The event may be have been billed as The Forum for Women in Accounting, but the issues and topics discussed at the three-day confab here were decidedly not just for one gender.That was the overriding sentiment during the course of the conference, and one that resonated with the majority of the 250 attendees, which even included a handful of men.

In a venue where fantasy can often trump reality, some 500-plus attendees at Tech+, the American Institute of CPAs’ Information Technology Conference, were mostly all business as they crammed into sessions and various keynotes in hopes of profitably applying any and all takeaways to their practices and their clients.Throughout this year’s sessions, conference-goers were exposed to current and future technology developments, and some new vendors, as well as perpetual must-do projects and strategies such as document management and IT security.

Accounting firm Blackman Kallick announced the death of former managing partner Dan Fensin, who retired from the firm late last year after running it for 17 years.“We are grateful for all that Dan has done for the community, his profession and our firm,” wrote his successor, Steven Schneider. “He contributed to the personal growth of countless people, myself included. While we are all saddened that he was stricken on the eve of a well-deserved retirement, we can take comfort in knowing that he loved life, and even in his final days he considered himself one of the luckiest people on earth because of family, friends and his life’s work.”

SEC APPROVES SOX 404(B) EXTENSIONWashington, D.C. — The Securities and Exchange Commission has approved a one-year extension of the compliance date for smaller public companies to meet the Section 404(b) auditor attestation requirement of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

The Internal Revenue Service's Criminal Investigation Division increased its enforcement activities last fiscal year after they fell behind in fiscal 2006, according to a new report.

Swiss investment bank UBS plans to stop offering offshore banking to U.S. residents after the bank was questioned about its clients' tax avoidance practices at a Senate hearing.

Back-to-school shopping will be tax-free for a few days next month in 13 states and the District of Columbia, according to a report by CCH.