Audit & Accounting

The Governmental Accounting Standards Board has a host of complex projects on the docket for 2008. The first half of the year will see a few new documents, while the second half will entail mostly discussions.

A new report finds that the cost of compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 internal control audit requirements for smaller public companies is actually about 14 percent lower than originally estimated.

The Internal Revenue Service hopes that new interim guidance for tax preparers will ease concerns over the expanded preparer penalties and heightened standards of conduct that must be met to avoid the penalties.

The Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act of 2007 has introduced a new paradigm of tax strategies for those who are falling behind on their home mortgage payments (or anticipate falling behind as the result of a pending adjustable rate mortgage reset).

The pace of accounting standards convergence is accelerating, and is being driven primarily by an investment community that is rapidly embracing International Financial Reporting Standards.

Are your clients pointed in the right direction? Gail Cunningham of the National Foundation for Credit Counseling recommends that people review where they are in order to determine where they’re headed, as well as encouraging them to consider implementing certain tips. The NFCC was founded back in 1951 and is the nation’s largest and longest serving national nonprofit credit counseling organization. She says that a few simple steps can make a dramatic difference in one’s financial life.

KPMG has signed a three-year agreement with champion golfer Phil Mickelson under which he will wear the KPMG logo on his headgear at all of his golf-related appearances.

A significant number of initial public offerings were in the U.S. markets' pipeline in the fourth quarter of 2007, according to a quarterly report issued by Ernst & Young.

Larry Rodda, a former principal and managing director of KPMG Consulting, has agreed to pay an $80,000 penalty to the Securities and Exchange Commission to settle charges that he deceived investigators over accounting fraud at Peregrine Systems.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has decided to issue final guidance that would defer for a year the effective date on which private and public entities would have to account for fair value measurements.