Audit & Accounting

The International Federation of Accountants has convened the first meeting of a coalition of major accounting firms, civil society groups and international organizations to develop strategies to encourage high-quality public sector financial reporting, greater government transparency and accountability, and empowered citizen engagement.

The requirements in the Sarbanes-Oxley Act for outside audits of internal control may actually be penalizing companies that reveal problems with their controls, according to a new study.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board issued for public comment Wednesday a proposed accounting standards update that would defer the effective date of its new revenue recognition standard by one year.

Members of the International Forum of Independent Audit Regulators agreed in principle on the text of a multilateral arrangement for exchanging information about audit firms during a meeting in Taipei.

The International Accounting Standards Board voted Tuesday to propose a one-year deferral of the revenue recognition standard that the IASB converged last year with the U.S. Financial Accounting Standards Board.

The American Institute of CPAs is pushing to improve the quality of employee benefit plan audits, in part by discouraging unqualified firms from offering the service, in advance of an upcoming report from the U.S. Department of Labor that is expected to find continuing problems with the quality of one-third of the audits.

The American Institute of CPAs has issued a set of questions and answers on the services a practitioner can provide in connection with the American Land Title Association’s Best Practices Framework for real estate settlement.

A Citigroup Inc. unit and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP must face claims they played a part in costing investors more than $1 billion in Bernard Madoff’s massive Ponzi scheme, an appeals court ruled.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has proposed three accounting standards updates related to employee benefit plans and another update for electricity contracts.

Practical tips for when and what to disclose