Audit

The Chartered Professional Accountants of Canada organization has published a new study on the evolving corporate reporting landscape, focusing particularly on sustainability issues.

The American Institute of CPAs has revised two publications used by auditors of governmental and not-for-profit entities that spend federal awards and those who audit state and local government financial statements.

Stanley Hochhauser passed away last Wednesday. He was a client that I worked with in my first job and became my client when my father passed away in 1976. Stanley was the last of my father’s clients and his passing also closed a link to my past. I am an accountant because of clients like Stanley.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has issued an accounting standards update to simplify the measurement of inventory.

The International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board released an exposure draft proposing amendments to its International Standards on Auditing in response to recent proposals from International Ethics Standards Board for Accountants on how to respond to noncompliance with laws and regulations.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has disciplined seven audit firms and seven auditors who worked at the firms for violations of the Engagement Quality Review standard and other requirements.

Institutional investors are expressing a high level of dissatisfaction with the types of sustainability-related information they are getting from companies, according to a new survey from PricewaterhouseCoopers.

One of the more intriguing questions stemming from the Toshiba Corp. accounting scandal is this: Where was the whistleblower?

Toshiba Corp. issued almost 1 trillion yen ($8 billion) of stocks and bonds when it was inflating earnings statements, leaving the company exposed to possible regulatory fines and investor lawsuits.

The International Accounting Standards Board confirmed Wednesday a one-year deferral of the effective date of the revenue recognition standard to stay in alignment with the Financial Standards Accounting Board, which also recently decided to defer the standard for companies in the U.S.

Toshiba Corp. President Hisao Tanaka and his two predecessors quit after investigators found that the Japanese conglomerate inflated earnings by at least $1.2 billion since the global financial crisis.

Board members at nonprofit organizations are too far removed from some of their key governance responsibilities, according to a new survey by the accounting firm Marks Paneth.

The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, a nonprofit organization that provides sustainability accounting standards that can be used on a voluntary basis by publicly listed U.S. corporations, has debuted a Data Provider Partner Program to give investors access to information on corporate sustainability performance.

Toshiba Corp. must correct at least 152 billion yen ($1.2 billion) of pretax earnings over a six-year period after an internal accounting probe revealed the company overstated profits under pressure from management.

A new academic study casts doubt on whether efforts to require companies to rotate their audit firms lead to greater professional skepticism on the part of auditors.

The ride-sharing app Uber is showing up more than taxis on employee expense reports, according to a new analysis.

The International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board has release its revised International Standards on Auditing to provide more focus on financial statement disclosures.

XBRL US has begun a public exposure period for rules developed by its Data Quality Committee, which aims to improve the quality of financial filings using the interactive Extensible Business Reporting Language format mandated by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

A 94-year-old man who was once a Waffen SS volunteer at Auschwitz was convicted for aiding in the murder of more than 300,000 Jews at the camp and sentenced to four years in prison.

Over the course of more than 40 years in practice and teaching both undergraduate and graduate accounting students, I have encountered some interesting, sometimes humorous definitions of some basic accounting terms.