Audit & Accounting

To assist companies in dealing with the plunging markets and subsequent fallout, Protiviti, a provider of internal audit and risk advisory services, has assembled a Financial Crisis Team.

Closing date is fast-approaching. CPA Wealth Provider is calling for nominations for its Sixth Annual Financial Planning Awards in any of the following categories: CPA/Financial Planning Firms, Broker/Dealers, and Financial Planning Software Vendors. Winners are those firms or companies that have taken the lead through innovation, efficiency, initiative, or growth in the financial planning area. The winners will be profiled in the January 2009 issue of CPA Wealth Provider and copies of the issue will be included with the January issues of Accounting Today, Accounting Technology, and Practical Accountant, as well as being featured on WebCPA.com and at applicable conferences and conventions. No forms are needed to nominate. Simply send information about what company or firm is being nominated and in what category. Explain briefly how this firm or company has taken the lead through innovation, efficiency, initiative, or growth in the financial planning area. You can even nominate yourself. An example can be used. For instance, one company, a winner in the first year, showed that its seven financial planners all hold specific certifications or licenses and that this comprehensive planning approach has earned the firm an impressive customer loyalty with 99 percent of clients who sign remaining with the firm on a permanent basis. The judges this year are Bill Carlino, editor-in-chief of Accounting Today, Howard Wolosky, editor-in-chief of Practical Accountant, and myself. Nominations must be received by November 7, 2008. Send nominations by e-mail, regular mail, or fax to: Stuart Kahan, Executive Editor

After a two-year battle, the Internal Revenue Service has released thousands of pages of agency statistics to the Syracuse University-based Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., has proposed a $150 billion Emergency Stabilization Fund to help small businesses, universities, students and municipalities cope with the credit crisis, with the money coming from the $700 billion financial bailout package.

The Securities and Exchange Commission said it has started work on a study of mark-to-market accounting authorized by the financial rescue bill that was approved last week.

Participants in a Securities and Exchange Commission roundtable discussed how the credit crisis would affect the SEC's plans for an improved financial disclosure system.

The Internal Revenue Service issued a notice late last week that allows U.S. corporations to get more tax-free loans from their foreign subsidiaries.

PricewaterhouseCoopers has agreed to pay $97.5 million as a partial settlement of a securities class-action lawsuit over the firm's audits of AIG, the insurance giant recently taken over by the federal government.

The financial rescue plan approved by Congress last week included many extensions of expiring tax credits and deductions that helped it win passage in the House, but it also left out some tax issues that will surely be bones of contention for the next Congress.

American workers have lost as much as $2 trillion in their pensions and retirement savings in the past 15 months, witnesses told a hearing of the House Education and Labor Committee.