Audit fees continued to increase in 2016

Auditing fees kept up their steady pace of increase over the past six years, according to a new report, climbing from $7.6 billion in 2010 to $9.2 billion in 2016.

The ratio of audit fees over revenue also grew to $541 per $1 million of revenue, according to the report, from the research firm Audit Analytics. The firm’s annual report, Audit Fees and Non-Audit Fees: A Fifteen Year Trend, examines audit and non-audit fees paid and disclosed by accelerated and large accelerated filers since 2002.

Back in 2002, non-audit fees made up 51.5 percent of the total fees paid by accelerated filers. However, after declining steeply in 2003, 2004 and 2005 in the wake of the passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, non-audit fees have leveled off to between 20 and 22 percent, Audit Analytics noted in a blog post about the new report.

Non-audit fees without audit-related services accounted for approximately 10.8 percent of the total fees paid by accelerated filers in 2016, less than a third of the proportion back in 2002.