Audit & Accounting

The chairman of a House appropriations subcommittee with oversight of the Securities and Exchange Commission, has called on the Government Accountability Office to investigate reported SEC budget shortfalls.

While Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley says management is responsible for establishing and reporting on a company's system of internal controls, more than half of 329 companies reporting control deficiency disclosures did so because their external auditors identified and reported those weaknesses, according to a report by the Financial Executives Research Foundation.

Expressing optimism that the bipartisan bickering over a litany of Capitol Hill issues would be suspended at least temporarily, Treasury Secretary John W. Snow said that a finding a solution for the wheezing 70-year-old Social Security program would be the test of lawmakers from both sides of the aisle to come together.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board revoked the registration of a New York public accounting firm and disciplined three of its partners for concealing information from the board and submitting false information in connection with a PCAOB inspection.

A bipartisan coalition of members of the U.S. Senate Finance Committee, including chairman Charles Grassley, R-Iowa; ranking member Max Baucus, D-Mont.; Ron Wyden, D-Ore.; and Jon Kyl, R-Ariz., have introduced legislation to repeal the alternative minimum tax.

The president's panel studying tax overhaul options isn't expected to recommend major changes to the estate tax, according to published reports.

Legislators and the public should be aware that carry-over basis problems of estate tax repeal could be a nightmare, according to the American Association of Attorney-CPAs.

Reiterating the Financial Accounting Standards Board's 2005 goal of simplification, FASB Chairman Robert Herz told attendees at the American Institute of CPAs Spring Meeting of Council that the regulatory climate has reopened such issues as differential standards and the codification of generally accepted accounting principles, thus intensifying the need to hone standards and reduce the number of accounting guidance outlets.

The federal government's current fiscal business model isn't sustainable and major changes need to be made, the Comptroller General told a group of New York CPAs here.

More than 14 percent of large public companies will receive failing grades on their internal controls, according to the latest Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 internal control disclosure research by AuditAnalytics.com.