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A business valuation standard that has been incubating for the past five years within the American Institute of CPAs is ready to hatch early next year, and when it does, it could force those who perform business valuations to pay attention to yet another set of guidelines.

Regardless of which of the multiple return dates applied to taxpayers, e-filed returns during the 2007 filing season began pouring in early in the process and kept coming at a steady pace.

A recent law now requires New Jersey CPAs to attend an orientation program within six months of qualifying as a CPA.

Sage Software is unveiling a fresh infrastructure that aims to shift its business units more closely to its customers' needs, creating two new business divisions, as well as a new chief technology officer position.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board issued its 2006 inspection report for Big Four firm Ernst & Young, citing problems in eight of the audit engagements it reviewed.The audit overseer inspectors said that E&Y appeared to have signed off on some audits without having sufficient evidence to support its opinions. However, the number of problems in E&Y's inspected audits declined since last year's report, when the PCAOB cited 10.

Nearly three decades ago, California enacted Proposition 13, a highly debated piece of legislation that limited property taxes to 1 percent of the full value of the property, and reduced them statewide by an average of 57 percent.Today, a swelling number of grassroots movements in several states that are protesting skyrocketing property taxes and filing appeals may usher in the question of whether the U.S. will one day need similar legislation on a national level.

In junior high school, I had a certain fascination for figure/ground images - those illustrations that, depending on how they were perceived, were either two profiles facing each other or the outline of a lampshade. When I asked the school psychologist the purpose of the drawings, she told me that they gauged our ability to discern images or separate them amidst a contrasted background.Despite understanding about every third word of her professional explanation, I was able to figure out in layman's terms that some people see things one way, while others see them another.

During six decades as an observer, I have met and known a myriad of accountants - in public practice, as corporate executives, in government positions, as teachers, and in our national and state accounting organizations. To me, some are unforgettable and admirable.In a previous issue (May 21-June 3, 2007, page 6), I recalled the stories of two of them, Emanuel Saxe and Thomas G. Higgins. Here are two more.

PARDON MY SKEPTICISMThe Nehru jackets are still hanging in a lot of closets, alongside the trends for improving the audit profession.

Former Internal Revenue Service district director Jesse Ayala Cota pleaded guilty to conspiring to defraud the United States through his involvement in a tax fraud scheme promoted by the Topeka, Kansas-based organization Renaissance, The Tax People Inc.Cota admitted in his plea agreement that from 1997 through April 2002, the conspirators, through Renaissance, operated a scheme to defraud the government by marketing a program designed to sell illegal tax deductions through false and misleading representations.