Audit

The Securities and Exchange Commission provided information Tuesday on filing financial statements in Extensible Business Reporting Language for public companies that will soon be required to file in the XBRL format.

A new survey by Thomson Reuters found a perceived increase of 80 percent in audits of indirect taxes such as value-added taxes.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board is still aiming to preserve its job as the standard-setter for private company accounting, while expanding its outreach and consultation with representatives of privately held businesses.

Financial Accounting Standards Board chair Leslie Seidman gave an overview of the work of the board as it tries to achieve its convergence goals with the International Accounting Standards Board, and said they were taking extra time to get the standards right and trying to simplify them to make them easier for accountants to apply.

The Center for Audit Quality has published the In-Depth Guide to Public Auditing.

The Pan African Federation of Accountants held its first meeting in Dakar, Senegal, this week.

Public Company Accounting Oversight Board Chairman James Doty plans to unveil a new model for the auditor's report and said he wanted to see disciplinary proceedings for auditing firms to be made public.

The issue includes articles on the following topics and more:

The International Federation of Accountants’ Professional Accountants in Business Committee has issued proposed guidance on how accountants can help businesses and their own firms do better forward-looking analysis.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has issued an Accounting Standards Update that would revise the rules for how companies can deal with repurchase agreements like the kind Lehman Brothers used to temporarily move billion of dollars of assets temporarily off its books before reporting its quarterly results.

Truck maker Navistar International has filed a $500 million lawsuit against its former auditor Deloitte & Touche alleging professional malpractice.

The American Institute of CPAs said Wednesday that it is expanding the registration and exam options for its specialty credentials, providing CPAs with more flexibility and opportunity to pursue designations that help differentiate them in the market.

Accounting and business consulting firm J.H. Cohn announced revenues of $236 million for the fiscal year ending Jan. 31, 2011.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has released a study recommending that the existing auditor attestation requirement in Sarbanes-Oxley be kept in place for companies with a public float of between $75 million and $250 million.

The International Public Sector Accounting Standards Board has published its 2011 Handbook of International Public Sector Accounting Pronouncements.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has issued an exposure draft of a proposed Accounting Standards Update that aims to simplify how an entity is supposed to test goodwill for impairment.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board provided a progress report Thursday on the latest timeline for their major convergence projects.

The American Institute of CPAs has included the latest guidance from the Financial Accounting Standards Board on accounting for mergers and acquisitions in the newest edition of its book Accounting Trends & Techniques.

The International Accounting Education Standards Board proposed changes in its ethics standards to provide for learning and development activities in professional values and ethics for accountants throughout their careers.

Leaders of the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board said Thursday they have pushed back their work on the handful of “priority” projects they had committed to complete this year.