Audit

In remarks to reporters after a speech in Washington, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox said that small companies aren't likely to receive any exemptions from the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

Federal regulators released a consumer research study that offers suggestions for consumer-friendly financial privacy notices.

Three former KPMG auditors settled charges of improper professional conduct for failing to properly complete the audit of Tenet Healthcare Corp.'s 2002 financial statements and them making changes to try and conceal their work.

The Auditing Standards Board of the American Institute of CPAs has issued a suite of eight new standards on risk assessment that should significantly improve the quality of audits of private companies.For the many audit firms that have traditionally offered high-quality audits, the new standards will probably not require a lot of additional effort.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board issued a proposal that would require employers to recognize over funded or under funded defined benefit postretirement plans, including pension plans, in their balance sheets. The proposal would also require that employers measure plan assets and obligations as of the date of their financial statements.

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced that 17 companies -- compared to nine under an initiative launched last year -- have already agreed to participate in a new pilot program to use interactive data in their financial statement filings.

Senior U.S. financial executives are confident in the financial performance of their own companies, even if the economy does not perform well this year, said a survey from accounting firm Grant Thornton.

House lawmakers heard from various regulatory bodies and association leaders on ways financial reports could be made more user-friendly for investors and the general public.

Public companies and their auditors will have some added leeway to ensure compliance with still unfinalized Public Company Accounting Oversight Board rules restricting the kinds of tax services auditors can provide.

One of the 19 defendants facing tax fraud charges over KPMG's sale of questionable shelters struck a surprise deal with federal prosecutors, copping to one count each of conspiracy and tax evasion.

For the 2005 fiscal year, just 30 out of the country's more than 180,000 millionaires received a face-to-face audit from the Internal Revenue Service, according to Syracuse University's Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse.

A survey of public company filings has revealed that the spike in audit fees under the early years of Sarbanes-Oxley may really have been temporary, though fees did increase in 2005.

The International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board has re-issued an exposure draft titled "The Audit of Group Financial Statements."

The former chief of defense contractor Raytheon Co. will reportedly pay a civil fine and return part of his 2000 bonus as part of a tentative settlement with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Sen. Paul Sarbanes, D-Maryland, spoke out in strong defense of the corporate accounting legislation that bears his name last week, in a speech before the Consumer Federation of America.

Businesses paid $497 billion in state and local taxes for the 2005 fiscal year, about 44 percent of the total taxes collected by all state and local governments, according to the annual study prepared by the Quantitative Economics and Statistics practice of Ernst & Young in conjunction with the Council On State Taxation.

Chief financial officers offered some strong opinions on the Securities and Exchange Commission's proposal to expand disclosure of executive compensation, according to the first quarter "CFO Outlook Survey," conducted by Financial Executives International and Baruch College's Zicklin School of Business.

Two overseas auditors have been charged by the Securities and Exchange Commission for alleged misconduct in the audits of British software company AremisSoft Corp.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board said that it won't publicly release the control problems and structural deficiencies uncovered at the Big Four firms during its initial round of inspection reports.

After months of speculation, Google rolled out a beta version of Google Finance on March 21, its own site bringing together pertinent information from across the Web about companies and mutual funds.