Audit & Accounting

In May 2005, a U.S. House of Representatives Energy and Commerce subcommittee on health concluded that the rising cost of long-term health care, coupled with the impending surge of Baby Boomer retirees, could cripple the country financially unless changes are made.Testifying before the subcommittee, Dr. Judy Feder, dean of public policy at Georgetown University, stated that in the years ahead, just 30 percent of post-65-year-olds will die without needing long-term care. Twenty percent of that age group will require more than five years of care.

Three years after the guilty verdict that effectively destroyed the firm, the Supreme Court has overturned the conviction of Arthur Andersen for shredding documents related to its audits of energy giant Enron Corp.

The recent bid for Ameritrade by rival E*Trade Financial put the online brokerage world on the front page, as two of the largest firms in the business involved in a potential merger might say something about the current state of the brokerage industry.

NASD Fines Raymond James $750K: The NASD has censured and fined Raymond James & Associates Inc. and Raymond James Financial Services Inc. $750,000 for violations related to the firms' fee-based brokerage business.As part of the settlement, the firms will also pay restitution to 190 customers totaling $138,000. The firms neither admitted nor denied the charges.

412(i) plans continue to generate both interest and caution following recent Internal Revenue Service and Treasury Department actions to crack down on a handful of abusive schemes that had cropped up in this marketplace.

Taxpayers are generally allowed to deduct the fair market value of property that they contribute to a charity.

Impacted by the exorbitant costs of Sarbanes-Oxley 404 compliance, the average audit fees for companies with less than $1 billion in revenue skyrocketed 96 percent, to roughly $1 million from 2003 to 2004, according to a study by the law firm of Foley & Lardner LLP, based here.

While lawmakers on Capitol Hill were embroiled in a heated filibuster debate, not far away, members of the ruling Council of the American Institute of CPAs passed a much less contentious vote, agreeing to support the development of standards for private and nonprofit entities.

The Governmental Accounting Standards Board has issued a preliminary views document on accounting for pollution remediation obligations, and though the board hopes to hammer it into a proposed accounting standard by the end of the year, some are predicting a heated debate over an estimated cash flow technique for recording costs.

Since its first meeting in February, the president's Advisory Panel on Federal Tax Reform has heard testimony and statements from more than 80 witnesses, and examined everything from the philosophical underpinnings and history of our current tax system, to the economic impact of potential tax systems.