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A federal appeals court in Boston has upheld the conviction and 51-month jail sentence of Richard Hatch, the first-season winner of Survivor, on tax evasion charges.

Thomson Tax & Accounting has debuted OneSource Tax, a portal that helps corporate tax departments access tax tools, manage their workflow and keep track of information.

CFOs remain concerned about their companies' ability to recruit skilled professionals, according to a new survey.

The American Institute of CPAs has written to the Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service about proposed regulations for automatic contributions to 401(k) plans, as well as cafeteria plans.

Every once and a while you come across a firm that knocks your socks off. Dezan Shira & Associates (dezshira.com) is just such a firm.

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox said he expects to see the SEC start allowing U.S. companies to file financial statements in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards in the year ahead.

Sage Software has launched a new Act! by Sage Online Community to provide users with a place to share information through a variety of themed discussion forums and blogs covering best practices, product usage tips and feature requests.

Actor Wesley Snipes was found not guilty of felony charges of tax fraud and conspiracy, but was found guilty on three misdemeanor charges of failing to file a tax return for three years.

About 15 years ago, I was attending an investment conference in New York, when I found myself sharing an elevator with an angular man replete with an admirable head of silvery hair and a manicured beard. I didn't know who he was at the time, but after many years in this business you instinctively know when someone is a VIP. It wasn't until a while later when I saw a story about him in BusinessWeek did I learn he was the chief executive of a fast-rising telecommunications company in Mississippi. I had essentially forgotten that brief encounter until several years ago when I again saw his picture in the paper. This time it was not a story depicting the growth of his company -- WorldCom -- but rather an expose about a series of accounting irregularities that had forced the carrier to restate its earnings by several billion dollars. I won't rehash what is certainly a painful and expensive memory for many who were affected by the WorldCom quagmire. As many of you know those curious accounting entries morphed into the largest bankruptcy in American history. It also resulted in a 25-year prison term for Bernie Ebbers, my elevator companion at that investment conference, a five-year sentence for Scott Sullivan, the company's CFO, and lighter terms for several of the complicit accountants. Each month, our office receives conservatively 20 books on various accounting topics, many of which., depending on their relevance to our readership, receive a blurb in our New Products section. Recently, however, a copy of "Extraordinary Circumstances: The Journey of a Corporate Whistleblower" came across my desk. The book, written by Cynthia Cooper, the head of WorldCom's internal audit whose team uncovered the accounting fraud at the company, chronicles the rise and subsequent free-fall of what was up until the wheels came off, an "only in America" success story in the highly competitive telecommunications sector. But what I found most fascinating and, at the same time, frightening, was that many of those directly embroiled in the scandal were ordinary folks, regular churchgoers with families and mortgages who, faced with unyielding pressure from both superiors and Wall Street, made choices they never envisioned making. Conversely, members of Ms. Cooper's audit team were, in her words, "ordinary people facing extraordinary circumstances." Faced with incredible resistance from upper management and the board, they persevered until the fraud ballooned so large that eventually swarms of federal prosecutors invaded the company's headquarters. Her efforts ultimately landed her on the cover of Time magazine along with Sherron Watkins of Enron and Coleen Rowley of the FBI as "People of the Year" in 2002. I won't inflate the book to the stature of calling it accounting's version of "All the President's Men," nor is it anywhere near as well written. To be fair, Ms. Cooper is an auditor by trade, not a writer and often it shows in redundancies and verbose backdrops. Nevertheless, it's a fascinating study of the quantum changes in character that accompany the accumulation of unimaginable wealth as well as an uncomfortable reminder of how, faced with an ethical fork in the road, just how easy it is for some to take a wrong turn.

The Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service issued guidance to address the application of accrual rules for pension plans under the Tax Code.