Audit & Accounting

* HENSSLER ENTERS ACCOUNTING JOINT VENTURE: The Henssler Financial Group, a Kennesaw, Ga.-based concern, has formed a joint venture with the Atlanta-area accounting firm of Dickinson & DiLuzio to form a new accounting division of the firm - Dickinson, DiLuzio & Henssler LLC.The new entity will provide financial consulting services for both individual and institutional clients. This partnership expands Henssler to two offices and a staff of more than 55.

The Internal Revenue Service's new rules for qualified retirement plans went into effect on March 28, but the ripple effect from the rules has yet to play out.

With limited exceptions, the tax on married couples filing jointly usually has been lower than the combined tax on married couples filing separate returns.

The embattled Roslyn School Board has filed an $11.2 million lawsuit against 10 current and former members in the aftermath to the massive accounting fraud at the Long Island school district. According to Newsday, the board members are being sued personally, and those members who served between 1998 and 2004 are accused of contributing to the alleged embezzlement of school funds. The board also voted to remove board member Patricia Schissel for failing to attend the previous five meetings. She is also named in the suit. The school district garnered national headlines following a report released by New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi that charged three former officials of the Roslyn N.Y. School District with plundering more than $11 million over an eight-year period. Former superintendent Frank A. Tassone, assistant superintendent Pamela Gluckin and clerk Debra Rigano, all of whom who were alleged to have siphoned the money from district coffers, are currently awaiting indictment by the Nassau County Grand Jury. In addition, Hevesi's state probe has implicated an additional 26 people in the audit scam. The accounting firm that audited the district, Miller Lily & Pearce, which also audited over 50 additional school districts and whose affiliate sold financial software to some 250 districts across New York state, has closed down.

American accounting contains an awkward contradiction. Though 99.7 percent of the country's 4.9 million corporations are privately held, a good deal of the country's generally accepted accounting principles are primarily relevant to the financial conditions of public companies traded on equities markets.

Congress is considering new legislation that could streamline accounting procedures for tens of thousands of U.S. companies by liberalizing the rules for the use of the cash accounting method by small business taxpayers.

The General Accountability Office and the Internal Revenue Service have added their own muscle to a Public Company Accounting Oversight Board proposal that would restrict the ability of accountants to provide tax services to audit clients.

If you're a CPA, you've got a headache. In fact, you've probably got several headaches.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board voted to send out for comment a measure that outlines audit procedures to ferret out whether Securities and Exchange Commission issuers have fixed previously identified internal controls weaknesses. Although Sections 404 and 302 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act mandate that both issuers and auditors must complete an annual assessment of internal controls, the standard from the oversight body would establish a voluntary, stand-alone engagement performed only at the request of the client company at any time of the calendar or fiscal year. The public comment period will be 45 days. The rule would subsequently become final pending a vote by the SEC. Although he defined the new standard as "narrower in scope" than the PCAOB's Auditing Standard No. 2, PCAOB chairman William McDonough said, "Our proposal for a new, voluntary, auditor's engagement to attest to management's corrections of individual material weaknesses will offer companies an opportunity to provide the investing public added assurance that previously disclosed weaknesses have been corrected." While board member Daniel Goelzer said that he thinks the new proposal is important, he described it as a "narrowly drawn tool" that he hopes "will be used sparingly."

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has released FASB Interpretation No. 47, Accounting for Conditional Asset Retirement Obligations, or the costs of taking plants out of service. Under FASB's new guidance, companies would have to immediately recognize on their balance sheets the costs of work that would be needed to close a factory -- such as asbestos clean-up -- even if it's uncertain when, if or how the work would be done. Interpretation 47 is effective no later than the end of fiscal years ending after Dec. 15, 2005 (Dec. 31, 2005, for calendar-year enterprises). Copies of Interpretation 47 are scheduled to be available in April 2005, through the FASB Order Department at (800) 748-0659 or by placing an order on the FASB Web site at www.fasb.org.