Finance

It figures that it would be Tom Allen who took on the single biggest accounting issue in the country, if not the world.It was Allen who, as chairman of the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, ushered in Statement 34, which moved state and local governments to accrual accounting - arguably one of the biggest changes ever to impact governmental accounting.

Like their GOP predecessors, the Democrats in charge of Congressional tax committees continue to wring their hands over the fiscal train wreck looming due to the escalating alternative minimum tax.But agreement on a way to stop that runaway AMT locomotive - a step that many tax accountants say is needed to head off a tax revolt by millions of middle-income American families - seems just as elusive as ever.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said that U.S. rulemakers should consider adopting "principles-based" regulations and accounting standards, in a speech at the Capital Markets Competitiveness Conference.Paulson said that in particular, there should be a focus on three issues in the U.S. - the country's regulatory structure, its accounting industry, and its legal and corporate governance environment.

One of my former employers has been the occasional subject of this column -- particularly when the topic centered on how not to run a business.

The American Enterprise Institute has released a new public opinion study that focuses on Americans’ historical attitudes to taxes.The study, “Public Opinion on Taxes,” was compiled by senior fellow Karlyn Bowman, who used available polling data to examine how attitudes toward paying taxes have changed over the past half century.

Along with making the case to keep executive compensation the way it is, the Financial Executives International recently said that investors are not well served by the complexity of financial reporting and released a four-point plan to address the problem.

The Office of Federal Housing Enterprise Oversight says that changes still need to come at mortgage lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

According to published reports, House Democrats are preparing legislation to permanently shield all but the wealthiest of taxpayers from the alternative minimum tax.According to the New York Times, the plan is still in its early stages, but would have the end goal of exempting millions from the tax -- although how exactly the revenue loss would be offset remains to be determined. The newspaper said that by the close of May, House Democrats hope to draft a permanent overhaul of the AMT that would exclude anyone who earns less than about $200,000 a year -- which covers about 97 percent of taxpayers.

A survey of chief executive compensation figures found that the median year-over-year percentage increase in pay was just short of 10 percent for 2006.

Plans by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board to overhaul the organization's standards for internal control audits don't go far enough to correct the problems of the PCAOB's original ground rules - or they go too far in watering down the original Sarbanes-Oxley Act protections for investors by yielding to powerful business groups.Or they muddy the waters for accountants who are already swimming upstream to interpret and implement Auditing Standard No. 2, which governs audits of internal controls.

Despite continued controversy over whether the use of private debt collectors is a direction the Internal Revenue Service should be moving in, a new federal report gave high marks to the first phase of the agency’s pilot program.

The Government Accountability Office says that the Taxpayer Advocate Service needs to be collecting better data on the type of cases it handles, as well as how those cases are actually being handled.The office was originally asked to examine why the advocate service has experienced an increased caseload since 2004, how well the service has conducted its activities in terms of measures such as customer satisfaction and quality, and finally, how well the service measures and reports its advocacy efforts.

I seldom veer off the subject of accounting in this space unless circumstances or events encourage me to do otherwise.

A House subcommittee met yesterday to examine the impact of the alternative minimum tax on individual taxpayers, particularly middle-income taxpayers who were never intended to be subject to the tax.

Citing pressures created by the nation's current and projected budget deficit, a growing long-term fiscal imbalance and a heavier workload that may impair its ability to serve its mission to Congress, the Government Accountability Office has requested a 2008 budget of $530 million – an 8.5 percent rise over the previous year’s funding levels.

The decision by the Senate to attach small business tax relief to its minimum-wage bill ensured the inclusion by House lawmakers of a similar package in their minimum-wage measure.The catalyst for the bill was the Senate linkage of small business relief to the minimum-wage boost. Although House Democrats initially threatened to "blue slip" the Senate bill - send it back because it contains tax provisions, violating the constitutional requirement that revenue legislation originate in the House - they eventually acted on H.R. 976, a bill that contained some provisions similar to the Senate measure.

The measures to close the tax gap offered by President Bush in his 2008 budget are somewhat modest, according to observers.The president's $2.9 trillion budget contains a number of legislative proposals to close the gap in four areas: by expanding information reporting, improving compliance by businesses, strengthening tax administration and expanding penalties.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson said that U.S. rulemakers should consider adopting "principles-based" regulations and accounting standards in a speech at the Capital Markets Competitiveness Conference.Paulson said that in particular, there should be a focus on three issues in the United States -- the country’s regulatory structure, its accounting industry and its legal and corporate governance environment.

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce had offered up a number of recommendations for changes to the country’s legal and regulatory framework -- taking aim at Securities and Exchange Commission and the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in the process.

In an early spurt of spring cleaning, I came across an ancient, yellowed clipping from the New York Post. Although there was no date on it, it is clearly from 1986, the year the Bears won the Super Bowl and Ronald Reagan got his tax reform. It tells the story of then-Treasury Secretary James Baker, who in his enthusiasm for both rap music and a simpler tax code, broke out into rhyming couplets during a rally to tout tax reform. His poetic achievement was based loosely on the Chicago Bears’ “Super Bowl Shuffle,” which members of the team recorded en route to their victory in Super Bowl XX, and which reached No. 41 on the Billboard charts before actually landing a Grammy nomination.