Audit & Accounting

The SEC is coming under increasing pressure to decide on what date it will start requiring accounting firms to file financial statements in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards.

Accounting firm Blackman Kallick announced the death of former managing partner Dan Fensin, who retired from the firm late last year after running it for 17 years.

The Internal Revenue Service has issued proposed regulations implementing amendments to the tax return preparer penalties.

All eyes are on the Securities and Exchange Commission as it prepares to issue a detailed roadmap this summer for the transition to International Financial Reporting Standards, but some representatives gave hints about what might be in that roadmap at a conference held by the Financial Accounting Standards Board in New York.

The Internal Revenue Service has recently published an online guide to help its examiners assess the validity of businesses' claims for the research credit.

The Treasury Department's Advisory Committee on the Auditing Profession convened an open meeting to hear testimony on its draft report on recommendations for improving the profession, as well as to discuss an addendum with additional recommendations.

The Internal Revenue Service has issued a notice providing guidance on the effect of adding liquidity facilities to support auction rate preferred stock on the equity character of the stock.

IPRO ONE ACQUIRES OWNERSHIP IN HBK SORCE FINANCIALiPro One has reached an agreement to purchase an ownership interest in HbK Sorce Financial, an investment advisory and wealth management firm with more than $1 billion in assets under management.

International work assignments — both inbound and outbound, short-term and long-term — have become more common as the world gets “smaller” and “flatter.”While on foreign soil, most employees feel that they deserve additional compensation and that they should be at least somewhat released from the growing number of domestic tax rules that restrict compensation packages. Some of the more irksome rules restricting compensation arrangements lately are contained in the final regs under Code Sec. 409A on nonqualified deferred compensation.

In a long-awaited shift in purview, the Auditing Standards Board has eliminated its standard on the hierarchy of generally accepted auditing standards just as the Financial Accounting Standards Board issued a new standard establishing the same hierarchy.Chuck Landes, the American Institute of CPAs’ director of auditing and attestation, said that the ASB fully approved of the shift in a vote at its quarterly meeting in May.