Audit & Accounting

As expected, Conrad W. Hewitt, a former Big Four managing partner and commissioner of California's department of financial institutions and superintendent of banking for the state, will take over the top accounting job at the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has barred Conseco Inc.'s former chief financial officer and chief accounting officer from auditing the books of public companies for at least the next five years.

Brand-new exchange-traded funds are coming onto the market faster than most advisors can keep up with them.Issuers such as PowerShares and Barclay's Global Investors file for groups of new offerings in the double digits, and the total number has topped 216 funds with aggregate holdings of $334 billion. The flood of new products means advisors' mailboxes are stuffed with offering memoranda. Most end up in the circular file, but a few have made their way into clients' portfolios alongside some of the older issues.

Using cash in a like-kind exchange is similar to passing around the proverbial "hot potato" - you don't want to be the one holding the potato, i.e., the cash, at the end of the transaction. If you do so in a like-kind exchange, you are probably holding "boot" (non-qualifying property), which is taxable to the extent of any gain otherwise locked up in the relinquished property (i.e., the difference between its fair market value and basis).Sometimes, strategies that involve the use of cash to facilitate like-kind exchanges under Code Section 1031 begin to seem like shell games, in which labels matter a great deal. In the end, however, the only labels that have been successfully applied are those that have made sense within the basic framework of Section 1031.

Nobody wants to be the bearer of bad news, but small business owners should be aware that the Internal Revenue Service is stepping up its examinations of companies' retirement plans this year, hoping to catch those that are cheating their workers or the government, or both, as well as to ensure that the plans meet federal regulations.Traditional pensions, 401(k) plans and profit-sharing plans are all on the agenda.

An individual who is planning to retire will often roll over the assets in her qualified plan into a traditional IRA, e.g., so that she will have more control over how the funds are invested.If the plan permits (and only if the plan permits), such an individual may also be able to roll over the assets in a traditional IRA to one of the following types of plans:

Testifying with blunt honesty before the Senate Banking Committee, Fannie Mae's top executives said that it will be years before the mortgage giant can recover from an accounting scandal.Fannie Mae's president and chief executive, Daniel Mudd, alongside chairman Stephen Ashley, testified that the Fannie Mae of today is nearly unrecognizable from before. In mid-June, Mudd volunteered to return some of his salary from the period that the accounting irregularities occured. He served as Fannie Mae's chief operating officer from 2000 through 2004.

The Financial Planning Association has unveiled the FPA Career Center, a tool designed to help those in the market for a new job and those looking to hire new employees.The site has more than 170 financial planning job openings from 139 firms throughout the country. It offers employers targeted access to financial planning professionals, and offers job seekers free and confidential resume posting.

A federal judge has ruled that the Internal Revenue Service went too far in retroactively banning the "Son of Boss" tax shelter.

Conrad W. Hewitt, a former Big Four managing partner and commissioner of California's department of financial institutions and superintendent of banking for the state, is expected to be named the chief accountant of the Securities and Exchange Commission.