The Latest

As CPA firms grapple with ongoing staffing challenges and the norm of a “traditional” workplace begins to erode, management must be more flexible and innovative than ever.

Last week, I used this space to comment on a survey that concluded audit quality in the U.S. has improved since Sarbanes-Oxley was signed into law in 2002.

The Treasury Department has released its blueprint for overhauling the regulatory structure of the financial markets in an effort to cope with the crisis in the mortgage and credit markets.

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.

Xerox and KPMG have agreed to settle a shareholder lawsuit dating back to 2000 claiming that Xerox manipulated its accounting to inflate its earnings.

R.R. Donnelley & Sons and Edgar Online have launched TryXBRL.com, a Web site that allows users to view and analyze financial statements tagged in Extensible Business Reporting Language from over 12,000 publicly traded companies.

Center for Audit Quality Comments on Treasury Blueprint

This year’s tax return filing season appears to be proceeding smoothly, despite the initial confusion that was generated by the seemingly annual last-minute tax legislation.Included in that flurry of new guidelines were the Tax Increase Prevention Act of 2007, which passed in December and included an Alternative Minimum Tax patch for the year that required some fine-tuning of the Internal Revenue Service’s computers to process returns that might be subject to the AMT; and the Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act of 2007, which also passed in December, and excluded mortgage debt forgiveness for homeowners whose home at foreclosure sold for less than the outstanding mortgage, if a portion of the unpaid debt was forgiven. In total, more than 10 forms this season were affected by the AMT patch.

The Financial Accounting Foundation’s board of trustees has voted to approve a range of sweeping changes in the oversight, structure and operations of the FAF and its two standards-setting boards — the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the Governmental Accounting Standards Board.The FAF plans to expand the number and breadth of investors, accounting, business, financial and government organizations and entities invited to nominate FAF trustees. Final authority for all the appointments will remain at the discretion of the board of trustees, who are responsible for the oversight, administration and finances for both of the standard-setting boards.

Much of the election-year criticism of hedge funds misses the point when it focuses on the claim that hedge fund operators get unfair tax breaks, experts say.There is abuse in the current Tax Code when it comes to hedge funds, but it affects the investors, according to Alan Dlugash, a tax partner at New York-based CPA and business advisory firm Marks Paneth & Shron. They’re often subjected to taxes that wipe out nearly all — or more than all — of the income that they made from the fund, he observed.