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SEC FORMS USER-FRIENDLY REPORTING GROUPWASHINGTON, D.C. - Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox has established an advisory committee to help make financial reporting more "user-friendly."

In the People section of the June 18-July 8, 2007, issue (page 25), Larry Mackowiak was incorrectly identified as based in the Elkhart, Ind., office of Crowe Chizek. In fact, he is based in the South Bend office.

Benjamin Franklin once defined insanity as doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. On a personal level, I could have applied this logic to my study habits in high school and college and their subsequent relation to my test results. You would think that after seven years or so, it would have dawned on me that something in the process was flawed.On a professional level, one could equate it with many of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board's audit inspection reports.

Over six decades, I have known CPAs from big firms, midsized firms and individual practitioners. Like Will Rogers, "I never met a CPA I did not like."J.S. SEIDMAN

TIGTA Questions IRS's Questionable Refund ProgramWASHINGTON, D.C. - A new Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration audit has found that changes in the Internal Revenue Service's Questionable Refund Program, along with a significant technological failure, dramatically decreased the effectiveness of the program for the 2006 filing season.

DREAMS INC. ENGAGES FRIEDMAN COHENSports memorabilia and licensing concern Dreams Inc. has named Friedman, Cohen, Taubman & Co. as its auditor.

With the exploding interest in and acceptance for market-value-based information in financial statements, we thought we would rerun a couple of columns from several years back as part of our summer tradition.This one was published in spring 2001, and talks about the hole in generally accepted accounting principles, even value-based GAAP, that continues to insist that there is a difference between unrealized and realized gains and losses. At the heart of this anachronistic practice is confusion between income and cash flows, which are two different things best described in two different financial statements.

Put a dozen managers and executives from financial planning firms in the same room, and before too long the conversation is likely to turn to the business issue that concerns them all: profitability. Whether they represent a one-person shop or are part of a large corporate structure, planners are almost universally challenged to serve the needs of their clients at a profit.To achieve that profitability, you must first address two other challenges - those presented by staffing and compensation. Getting the right people in place, giving them the tools to excel, and rewarding them for performance are all critical steps in achieving profitable growth.

PRUDENTIAL FINANCIAL TO SHUTTER STOCK RESEARCH UNITLife insurance and money management conglomerate Prudential Financial Inc. said that it would shut down its institutional stock research and trading business - Prudential Equity Group - after 26 years of operation. Prudential will close its offices and trading operations in nine U.S. cities, as well as in London, Zurich, Paris and Tokyo. Some 400 employees will be terminated.

Attendees at the American Institute of CPAs' recent Tech+ Technology Conference were not here to gamble, but, instead, to learn about the latest trends and learn how to harness technology to improve their bottom lines.The three-day confab's sessions were intended to provide the roughly 500 attendees with a "cookbook" of information, according to conference chairman David Cieslak, a partner at Arxis Technology Inc. in Simi Valley, Calif.