The Latest

Genworth Financial Investment Services has launched a new section of its Web site dedicated to practice management.

Three accounting firms based in Jackson, Miss., are combining with CPA firm BKD LLP.

Think you have a lot of e-mails? Those who work within the e-discovery process — the handling of electronic information and documents for litigation purposes — most likely have more.“Many of the smoking guns in a lot of these cases reside in e-mail,” said Catherine Parente, CPA, ABV, CVA and partner-in-charge of the consulting services department at CPA and business advisory firm Carlin, Charron & Rosen LLP. She added that one of the cases she’s currently working on includes four boxes of records, two of which contain printed out e-mails.

The Top 100 Firms report (with the March 17-30, 2008, issue) incorrectly identified the headquarters city of the Kemper CPA Group; it is, in fact, Greenfield, Ind.

Big Four firm KPMG could potentially face negligence litigation stemming from its audits of New Century Financial, the troubled mortgage company that collapsed last April, according to a report from an examiner for the bankruptcy court.The examiner, Michael Missal, a partner with Washington, D.C.-based law firm Kirkpatrick & Lockhart Preston Gates Ellis, said in a 580-page report that KPMG “failed to exercise due care in planning and carrying out its audits and reviews, failed to demonstrate appropriate professional skepticism with respect to management’s judgments, and failed to obtain sufficient competent evidence to support its opinions and representations to the company’s officers, directors and shareholders.”

JUDGE DISMISSES RACKETEERING, FRAUD CLAIMS AGAINST JACKSON HEWITTChicago — A federal judge has dismissed major parts of a class-action lawsuit brought against tax prep chain Jackson Hewitt and a large group of its franchisees.

Victor Mature, a staple of many of the “sword and sandal” epics of the 1940s and 1950s, was once turned down for membership in a posh Los Angeles country club. When he inquired as to why, the chairman told him that the club frowned on having actors as members. With perfect deadpan Mature replied, “But I’m no actor, and I have 67 films to prove it!”I sort of know how he felt. By my estimate, I’ve penned nearly 500 accounting-related columns, and yet I don’t think of myself as an expert on the profession as a whole or, for that matter, auditing as a subset — though I’ll admit I’m pleasantly surprised when I’m occasionally asked by readers or attendees at conferences what changes I would make to hone the auditing profession.

Accounting, the language of business, appears muted in its attempt to reconcile its pre-certification and a CPA’s lifelong continuing education requirements.We need to turn the volume up and encourage a dialogue. The future of accounting education is at stake. The profession is brimming with frustration over attempts by its practitioners to reconcile requirements from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.

With the current estate tax regime set to expire in 2010, it’s time to consider what comes next, say the nation’s tax experts.With that sunset date fast approaching, the Tax Division of the American Institute of CPAs has taken its comprehensive reform proposal and boiled it down to a top-seven priority list of suggested reforms that it urged Congress to pass prior to the expiration date.

IRS HAS $1.2B IN UNCLAIMED TAX REFUNDS FOR 2004Washington, D.C. — The Internal Revenue Service said that it had approximately $1.2 billion in unclaimed refunds waiting for 1.3 million people who did not file federal income tax returns for 2004, but they needed to file by April 15, 2008, to claim the money.