Audit & Accounting

Financial literacy scores of high school students continue to hover just around the 50 percent mark, according to the Jump$tart Coalition for Personal Financial Literacy, a national non-profit organization.

The country's largest jewelry retailer, Zale Corp., announced that its accounting, executive pay and severance agreements are under official investigation by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The just-released Winter 2005-2006 issue of the Statistics of Income Bulletin discloses that adjusted gross income rose in 2004 for the second year in a row, increasing by 8.9 percent to $6.8 trillion. The largest component of AGI, salaries and wages, increased 6.0 percent to $4,977.9 billion, while net capital gains rose 53.2 percent to $442.1 billion. Taxable income increased 10.6 percent to $4.6 trillion.

Eighty-four percent of senior finance executives polled by global CPA and business advisory firm Grant Thornton said that rules that allow companies in bankruptcy to turn over their pension obligations to the federal Pension Benefits Guaranty Corp. should be tightened.

For the third time, a federal court has sent rules governing the mutual fund industry back to the Securities and Exchange Commission for further reflection on the costs of the changes.

A survey of 120 chief financial officers and comptrollers found that more than 80 percent of the executives are in favor of rules that would make it harder for bankrupt companies to turn over pension obligations to the Pension Benefits Guaranty Corp.

My brother just retired from Cherry Hill, New Jersey, to Venice, Florida. "I used to be a doctor," he now says, and then turns to one of three books he will read in a week.

A new survey says that the average cost for the internal controls provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act is $3.8 million, down 16.3 percent from last year and about halfway to the drop anticipated for the second year of compliance.

Personal bankruptcy filings dropped to their lowest level in 20 years during 2006's first quarter, according to financial research firm Lundquist Consulting Inc.

The Internal Revenue Service heard from a variety of groups on a proposed rule change that the agency says would strengthen taxpayer control over tax information in the hands of tax preparers or tax software companies.