Audit & Accounting

After opposition from business and the accounting profession, the International Accounting Standards Board has shelved its plans to fast-track changes to its technical corrections policy.

Big Four firm PricewaterhouseCoopers and its global network reported combined member firm revenues of $20.3 billion for the year ended June 30, 2005, a nearly 17 percent rise in U.S. dollars versus the previous year.In local currencies, the firm's growth was about 12 percent. Excluding expenses reimbursed by clients, net aggregate revenues for the global network were $19 billion in U.S. dollars.

Investing in China may garner top billing at some international investment conferences, but 1.3 billion people building an economy with near double-digit growth rates still isn't enough to attract the interest of most CPA advisors.The risks and complications of investing in China keep most advisors away, but booming growth keeps the topic on the radar, and it's attracting additional fund companies.

* FIELDSTONE JETTISONS KPMG: Fieldstone Investment Corp. has dismissed KPMG as its auditor and named Big Four rival Deloitte as its replacement.Fieldstone, a Columbia, Md.-based residential mortgage banking concern, reported no unresolved accounting disagreement with KPMG for its two most recent fiscal years.

* AMERIPRISE SETTLES ON SALES OF 529 PLANS: Ameriprise Financial Inc. will pay $1.25 million to settle an enforcement action brought by regulators over its sales of Section 529 college savings plans, the company said. Ameriprise neither admitted nor denied wrongdoing.Brokerage regulator NASD said that the action against broker and insurer Ameriprise was its first in a probe into Section 529 plan sales practices at 20 securities firms. Other investigations are ongoing.

Government officials now expect 401(k) plan sponsors to conduct periodic due diligence reviews. With respect to their 401(k) or other retirement plans, the problem is that most plan sponsors do not have the in-house resources to do so.This is not something that 401(k) plans historically did. On the heels of the recent mutual fund scandals, though, Labor Department officials indicated that sponsors had a duty to periodically investigate plans and benchmark funds and fees.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board approved its budget for 2006, which will also allow for a reduction in the support fees paid by publicly traded companies.

Yet another piece in the jigsaw of legislation controlling corporate governance, accountancy and auditing, aimed at boosting investor confidence in European Union business, is coming into focus as upgrades are being considered to the 4th and 7th Directives on risk management and internal control for unlisted companies.Those enhancements cover both off-balance-sheet arrangements and company transactions with related parties such as family members.

If the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission has succeeded in doing what it set out to do, small public companies may soon have an easier time of documenting their internal controls.Back in 1992, COSO issued a set of recommendations, "Internal Control - Integrated Framework." Ten years later, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 required companies to certify the adequacy of their internal controls, and the COSO framework became a de facto standard.

Tax practice for CPAs is changing. Recent modifications to Circular 230, the U.S. Treasury Department regulations that govern practice before the Internal Revenue Service, have established several changes that leave CPAs with a new standard for the practice of taxation.The rationale for the revised regulations is part of an IRS effort to promote ethical tax practices and curb abusive tax avoidance programs promoted by some tax professionals. Some CPA and law firms were coming up with tax-motivated transactions for clients and then packaging those transactions to sell to other companies.