Audit & Accounting

Businesses paid $497 billion in state and local taxes for the 2005 fiscal year, about 44 percent of the total taxes collected by all state and local governments, according to the annual study prepared by the Quantitative Economics and Statistics practice of Ernst & Young in conjunction with the Council On State Taxation.

Chief financial officers offered some strong opinions on the Securities and Exchange Commission's proposal to expand disclosure of executive compensation, according to the first quarter "CFO Outlook Survey," conducted by Financial Executives International and Baruch College's Zicklin School of Business.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has begun a formal investigation of Mills Corp. after more than two months of informally looking into accounting problems at the shopping mall real-estate investment trust.

Two overseas auditors have been charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission for alleged misconduct in the audits of British software company AremisSoft Corp.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board said that it won't publicly release the control problems and structural deficiencies uncovered at the Big Four firms during its initial round of inspection reports.

After months of speculation, Google rolled out a beta version of Google Finance on March 21, its own site bringing together pertinent information from across the Web about companies and mutual funds.

In the latest turf battle to come to light between the two groups, the American Institute of CPAs and the National Association of State Boards of Accountancy recently squabbled over NASBA's interest in the details of public company audit inspection reports.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board released a statement aimed at simplifying the accounting for servicing assets and liabilities, such as those common to mortgage securitization activities.

Risk consulting and internal audit services provider Protiviti has teamed with enterprise software company diCarta to provide a contract management compliance solution for Protiviti clients.

The Internal Revenue Service's 2005 IRS Data Book is now available at the agency's Web site.