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The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Dwight Sean Jones, a former NFL player turned investment advisor, with failing to allow commission staff to examine his business records.

Steve Bennett, who has served as president and chief executive at tax and financial software conglomerate Intuit Inc. since 2000 and led the company to record growth during his tenure, announced that he will step down from those posts at the end of the year.The company did not give a reason for the resignation, but released a statement from Bennett saying, "Now, with eight successful seasons under my belt, the company solidly positioned for the future, and a CEO successor ready to lead the company, it's the right time for me to take some time off and explore the next challenge in my life."

The Internal Revenue Service has been called on to develop federal licensing requirements for all paid tax return preparers - an approach that would involve potentially controversial competency rankings to help taxpayers to identify and select tax professionals based on their level of expertise.The proposal was recently placed on the table by the IRS's own Taxpayer Advocacy Panel as part of a laundry list of recommendations for improvements at the tax service.

The American Institute of CPAs' professional ethics division has issued a proposal that would outline the independence requirements of CPA firm networks and associations.It would extend the independence requirements to any entity that a network firm either controls, is controlled by, or with which it is under common control. Network firms would be independent of all the other network firms' audit and review clients for which a general-use audit or review report is issued. For all other attest clients, a network firm would need to consider any threats that the firm has reason to believe might be created by other network firms' relationships with clients.

Are more nonprofits slowly adopting certain traits of for-profit companies?The short answer is yes.

JUDGE APPROVES $167.5M DELOITTE SETTLEMENT FOR ADELPHIANEW YORK - A U.S. bankruptcy judge has approved a $167.5 million settlement that Deloitte & Touche has agreed to pay to a trust set up by litigants for defunct cable television company Adelphia Communications. Deloitte and the Adelphia Recovery Trust agreed to the settlement in August. Judge Robert Gerber approved it without conducting a formal hearing.

I'm of the opinion that the seventh time you perform the same assignment, it should come that much easier. With any luck along the way, you'll encounter precious few surprises.Funny how that theory falls by the wayside each time the editors of Accounting Today begin to compile the list of potential candidates for our Top 100 ranking of the profession's most influential people.

CLINTON ROMIGWhen Katrina struck New Orleans, I thought of Clint and Dot Romig, who lived in Mandeville, La., three miles off Lake Pontchartrain, which, according to news reports, was flooding.

Paul Miller and Paul Bahnson have criticized my op-ed ("It's time to modernize the financial reporting paradigm," Accounting Today, March 19-April 1, 2007, page 14) in their Spirit of Accounting column ("Finding a new wrinkle in smoothing," June 18-July 8, 2007, page 15).In their enthusiasm to lead accounting back to the 19th century, they fail to see our points of agreement and fail to recognize my challenge for a third-way financial reporting paradigm.

TAX COURT RULES FOR EMBEZZLER'S HUBBYWASHINGTON, D.C. - The U.S. Tax Court has ruled in favor of a taxpayer, David Billings, who asked to be relieved from liability for the tax owed on money that his wife embezzled from her employer without his knowledge.