The Latest

MAY5: Buy/Sell Agreements, National Conference of CPA Practitioners, New Jersey Chapter. Victor’s Maywood Inn, Maywood, N.J. Contact: Fred Bachmann (973) 377-2009.

BDO CONSULTING STARTS CORPORATE ADVISORY PRACTICEChicago — BDO Consulting said that it is forming a corporate advisory practice to provide strategic and financial consulting services to companies in distress.

The pitch to CPAs is familiar: Why limit your practice revenue to the number of billable hours in the day, when the income potential from leveraging your client base for wealth advisory services is, in theory at least, unlimited?

Not long ago on these pages, my colleague, Howard Wolosky, who helms our sister publication, Practical Accountant, sort of took the AICPA to task for the dearth of important announcements on its Web site.

CALIFORNIA

The Treasury Department said it has sent out 7.708 million economic stimulus payments, or tax rebates, in the first week, totaling $7.091 billion.

Grant Thornton has consolidated its advisory services practice, combining the firm's various advisory service lines and more than 800 professionals across the U.S. into a single division.

Amazon.com has sued New York State over a new law that requires Internet businesses that receive referrals from other Web sites in the state to begin taxing purchases by New York customers.

The American Institute of CPAs has begun publicizing the revised set of peer review standards it quietly issued earlier this year.

XBRL US, the nonprofit group working to develop the Extensible Business Reporting Language in the U.S., said it has finished codifying collections of financial and business terms for U.S. generally accepted accounting principles in XBRL format, along with an accompanying preparers guide.