Audit & Accounting

As expected, the Treasury Department has created a new committee that will be charged with studying problems in the accounting industry.

The 2008 Low Income Taxpayer Clinic grant application process is now open.

Frank Piemonte over at River Communications, a company that handles public relations, marketing, and corporate communications for many prominent clients, sent me some info that was new to me. He says that according to the Senior Sentiment Survey from Financial Freedom, some one-third of senior homeowners are carrying mortgage debt on their primary home. We’re talking about seniors aged 62-75. And of these seniors, 59 percent indicate they still have 10 years of more before the mortgage is paid off while 27 percent have more than 20 years left on their mortgages.Financial Freedom commissioned Harris Interactive to conduct this, its third annual study on the opinions of senior citizens in the U.S.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board will vote on a final standard on auditing internal control over financial reporting next week, as well as taking up a related independence rule and conforming those amendments to the board’s auditing standards.

Section 404 compliance cost corporate America less in Year 3 of its adoption, than in each of the first two years, according to a recent survey.

Only 6 percent of companies have assessed how statement No. 157, “Fair Value Measurement,” will impact the valuation of their assets and liabilities, according to a recent online poll conducted by Deloitte Financial Advisory Services LLP.

The Securities and Exchange Commission will drop its fight against a court decision putting more restrictions on Wall Street brokers who oversee $300 billion in clients' cash.

Churches, charities and other tax-exempt organizations that paid the federal excise tax on long-distance or bundled telephone service qualify for this year’s one-time telephone excise tax refund, according to the Internal Revenue Service.

Penthouse International Inc. has settled charges of accounting fraud and financial reporting violations, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced last week.Former Penthouse executive Charles Samel and former shareholder Jason Galanis will both pay $60,000 to settle accounting fraud charges and be barred for five years from serving as officers or directors of any public company, although neither man admitted or denied wrongdoing as part of the settlement.

Like many of you who were once college freshman, I can vividly recall my first formalized session of “orientation,” those mandated get-togethers where a group of impressionable 17-and 18-year-olds receive a veritable laundry list from upperclassman and administrators of the do’s and don’ts in academe.