Industry data projects that by 2010, nearly half of all CPA firms will, to some degree, be providers of financial services to affluent clients.This represents a dramatic leap from the situation today, when only 19.4 percent of CPA firms are currently providing financial services to this client base. The opportunity is there, but to tap into it, firms must expand their capabilities and services, which increasingly involves building alliances with insurance and benefit companies.

Retirement is the No. 1 personal financial planning concern, regardless of age, according to an informal survey taken by the American Institute of CPAs at its Personal Financial Planning Conference.The AICPA said that it was a surprised to see that retirement planning is a major concern for career builders - classified as those between the ages of 25 and 34 - who also have the more immediate pressures of education, home buying and debt management following close behind.

Broker/dealer H.D. Vest has teamed with Cannon Financial Institute, a provider of financial services consulting, to provide practice management training to its top 600 advisors. The training sessions are scheduled to take place in Arizona and Texas in May, and the program has been named "Elite Academy." Participants will begin with a single concentrated workshop on "creating a consistent client experience."

Morningstar Investment Services, a registered investment advisor and subsidiary of financial information concern Morningstar Inc., has launched Morningstar Managed Portfolios Select Stock Baskets, a managed account service consisting of customized stock portfolios based on Morningstar indexes and independent equity research.The Morningstar Indexes form the basis of each stock basket's investment composition, and the stock basket is subsequently tailored to suit an investor's specific parameters, including sector and industry exposure, stock restrictions, existing holdings, and personal tax situation. MIS then selects stocks for the portfolio using Morningstar data and research on the stocks within the index.

Following a long period of assimilation, the London-based International Accounting Standards Board has released an exposure draft on accounting principles under International Financial Reporting Standards for the small and midsized sector.The IASB's goal was to provide a simplified, self-contained set of accounting principles that are appropriate for smaller, non-listed companies, but nevertheless based on IFRS - the guidelines developed primarily for listed European Union companies that are now in use or being adopted by 100 different countries around the world. American and EU regulators are currently embroiled in an ongoing convergence project between IFRS and U.S. generally accepted accounting principles.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act brought the tax manager into the financial statement reporting process as never before. As SOX Section 404 internal control certifications were made with respect to each input into the financial statements, it became clear that one of the weakest areas for SOX 404 compliance was accounting for income taxes.Under FASB Statement No. 109, Accounting for Income Taxes, the process of providing for deferred income taxes had become so subjective and subject to differing interpretations that certification of the results was difficult, and comparability across financial statements appeared to be lacking.

After much criticism and debate over the best approach to regulating business, in December the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board proposed a new audit standard for Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 implementation.Concurrently, the Securities and Exchange Commission introduced interpretive guidance for management's assessment of internal control. Both exposure drafts, which solicited feedback through February, promise change through a risk-based approach.

A federal appeals court ruled that the Securities and Exchange Commission overstepped its authority in updating rules governing brokers who offer financial advice.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has scheduled an open meeting on April 3 to consider proposing an auditing standard, “Evaluating Consistency of Financial Statements.”

The International Accounting Standards Board has issued a revised standard on borrowing costs.

I was raised in a medical family, meaning I was exposed to doctors and hospitals from the get go. It was a nice, comfortable atmosphere where none of the three sons was ever concerned about money. My mother never worked and my father did quite well except for stock investments.But in all those years living at home, I wouldn’t think of asking my father how much money he had or what kind of estate he was considering leaving to us kids, or even my mother. It just wasn’t the topic of any dinnertime conversation and my mother certainly never raised it. Actually, she was smart enough to take a portion of her weekly allowance and put it aside in stocks and bonds, and did quite well. Talk about a self-made woman. Without any formal education, she was just street smart about making sure she had her own protection in the event my father’s latest foray in investments went awry. It did once when he was a principal investor in Tucker automobiles but that’s a story for another time.

Dallas-based law firm Jenkens & Gilchrist Corp. will pay $76 million to the Internal Revenue Service to settle charges over its aggressive marketing of questionably legal tax shelters to wealthy individuals.

Reversing a trend of declining optimism over the past three years, CPAs serving as chief executive officers, chief financial officers and in other executive financial positions have a favorable view of the economy, according to the first quarter 2007 Business and Industry Economic Outlook Survey.

A prominent southern Illinois automobile dealer and three promoters of a tax fraud scheme in the U.S. Virgin Islands were indicted on a variety of tax and wire fraud-related charges, the Justice Department and the Internal Revenue Service recently announced.A federal grand jury in East St. Louis, Ill., returned the 21-count indictment, which charges James A. Auffenberg Jr. of Swansea, Ill., Peter G. Fagan of De Leon, Texas, James W. Ferguson III of Amarillo, Texas, and J. David Jackson of St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands, as well as a number of alleged business fronts held by the men. They face conspiracy, income tax evasion, wire fraud and aiding in the filing of false individual and corporate income tax returns charges.

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced it will hold an open meeting on April 4, to discuss the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board’s proposed auditing standard for Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and the coordination of the proposed changes with the SEC’s own guidance concerning implementation.

In a recent interview with Practical Accountant, Judith O’Dell, the recently-appointed chairwoman of the Private Company Financial Reporting Committee, explained the mandate that the committee will be following as it explores the need for different reporting standards for public and private companies in the following months.

Group Names Top Firms for Accounting, Governance Excellence

The Financial Accounting Foundation said that it will give the Securities and Exchange Commission the opportunity to propose and review candidates for open positions at either the foundation, or the board the foundation oversees, the Financial Accounting Standards Board.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged two former in-house lawyers at Enron Corp. with securities fraud over a Brazilian scheme to move losses off the company’s balance sheet.

The Justice Department said that a California marketer has pleaded guilty to a conspiracy charge of defrauding the United States for his involvement in a tax fraud scheme.Todd Eugene Strand of Murrieta, Calif., pleaded guilty today in a Kansas City federal court this week. According to the government’s indictment, between June 1997 and April 2002, Strand and a trio of co-defendants -- Daniel Joel Gleason, Michael Craig Cooper and Jesse Ayala Cota -- operated a scheme to defraud the Internal Revenue Service and taxpayers.