Audit & Accounting

In his State of the Union address, President Barack Obama proposed using money repaid by financial institutions to the Troubled Asset Relief Program to help small businesses.

The International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board has published three new standards that cover all aspects of the accounting for and disclosure of financial instruments in the public sector.

Internal auditors will soon be playing a larger role in ensuring the security of credit card information.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board tentatively decided to define fair value as an exit price during a three-day joint meeting this week.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has approved a new auditing standard that aims to toughen the requirements for concurring reviews of the work of audit teams.

Many companies are getting a jump on preparing for adoption of interactive data-tagging technology on their financial statements, even before they are subject to SEC requirements.

A group of top central bank governors is calling for accounting standard-setters to develop a provisioning approach for troubled loans based on an expected-losses model rather than fair value.

The Internal Revenue Service plans to audit Harvard University and about 39 other colleges as part of an overall review of tax-exempt nonprofit organizations.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has published two sets of staff questions and answers to provide guidance about a registered auditing firm’s obligation to report certain events to the PCAOB in special reports, and the process through which a firm can succeed to a predecessor firm’s registration status.

IMGCAP(1)]As I have performed over 700 SAS 70 audits, I should find that each SAS 70 audit is similar to the previous one I just performed. The good or bad news, depending upon how you look at it, is that they are not, and 2010 looks to be an even more challenging year to stay on top of the changes.