Audit & Accounting

Every year, Congress and the Internal Revenue Service help us justify a tax preparer's worth to clients by throwing a few new curves into the tax return preparation process. The 2005 tax return filing season is no exception.This year Congress even threw a few curves at the IRS and commercial tax software creators by passing year-end tax legislation with an impact on 2005 returns after the IRS had already done much of the work on its tax forms for the filing season. Here are some items to watch out for as you work through the 2005 return filing season.

KPMG is looking for participants for the second annual Section 404 Benchmark Survey run under the firm's 404 Institute.

Speaking at a Council on Foreign Relations forum in New York a day after the advisory panel's decision, f our former chairmen of the SEC all argued against exempting any companies from the internal controls provisions, according to reports.

After more than two years of legal maneuvering, the Securities and Exchange Commission settled the last of its charges in its investigation of Xerox Corp.'s alleged earnings manipulation.

Executives contemplating cross-border transactions in emerging markets view local legal, tax and accounting systems as the biggest challenges to completing a transaction, according to a poll conducted by Deloitte Financial Advisory Services LLP.

A handful of boldface names from the financial world lent their signatures to a letter to federal regulators, asking that no public company be exempted from the internal controls provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

More than three years after it's original passage, but still in the infancy of its implementation, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act is facing attacks on a number of fronts.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has announced it will charge two KPMG auditors for failing to act on a number of red flags that could have caught an estimated $30 billion accounting fraud sooner.

The International Federation of Accountants is seeking nominations for a public member for the International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants and for the International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board, two independent standard-setting boards within the federation.

The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board will sponsor a roundtable on May 10 in Washington to discuss second-year experiences with the internal controls provisions of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.