Vice president of taxation for the American Institute of CPAs Tom Ochsenschlager listed the top 10 provisions in recent tax legislation in his keynote speech at the New York State Society of CPAs’ Annual Tax/Plenary Conference on Nov. 16.Provisions folded into the Tax Increase Prevention and Reconciliation Act Ochsenschlager outlined included:

In a 25-page response NCAA president Myles Brand made an adamant case for his association’s tax-exempt status, following questions raised by the outgoing chairman of the House’s Committee on Ways and Means.Brand cited new NCAA penalties for poor team-wide academic performance and rising player graduation rates as evidence of the association's attention to education, adding that school spending on athletics -- including hikes in coaches' salaries -- are driven by a media and consumer market beyond the association’s control.

I got hooked onto Lee Eisenberg’s new book, “The Number” (Simon & Schuster, 2006), via Elaine Morgillo, a certified financial planner and president of New England-based Morgillo Financial Management.

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced that 1st Global Capital Corp., a Dallas-based broker-dealer, will pay a $100,000 penalty and consent to findings that it made unsuitable recommendations and sales of Section 529 College Savings Plans.According to the order, between 2001 and 2004 1st Global recommended and sold investments in 529 plan units without understanding and evaluating the comparative costs for its customers.

Beard Miller Co. LLP will sell its Financial Outsourcing Solutions practice to McKonly & Asbury LLP in a deal effective Jan. 1.

Former Enron Corp. chief accounting officer Richard Causey was sentenced to serve 66 months in prison for signing off on the bookkeeping that led to the company's historic bankruptcy.

The former chief executive of Fannie Mae has ended his pay dispute with the home mortgage giant after two years of legal wrangling.Franklin Raines will receive $2.6 million under a deal disclosed in a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission. Raines was forced into early retirement in December 2004 -- with a $19 million severance package in hand -- alongside former Fannie finance chief J. Timothy Howard, shortly after regulators announced that the government-sponsored company had violated accounting rules.

The Government Accountability Office has given good marks to the Internal Revenue Service’s 2005 and 2006 financial statements, but said that the agency did have to overcome “serious internal control and financial management systems deficiencies.”

The Securities and Exchange Commission has entered an order sanctioning the City of San Diego for committing securities fraud by failing to disclose information about its pension and retiree health care obligations.

Among all the joint tech and accounting initiatives out there XBRL seems to be the one gaining a steady amount of steam towards making real news and producing real returns for a wide audience. What remains to be seen is who’s actually able to realize real returns out of the technology.

Grant Thornton commissioned two research studies to ask if a company can switch from a Big Four audit firm to another qualified global, national or regional firm -- such as say, Grant Thornton -- without affecting stock price.

A report was recently released at an international conference in Paris. The 20-page report is entitled “Global Capital Markets and the Global Economy: A Vision from the CEOs of the International Audit Networks,” and its authors are the heads of PricewaterhouseCoopers, Grant Thornton International, Deloitte, KPMG International, BDO International, and Ernst & Young.The report is intended to promote “a robust dialogue about how global financial reporting and public company auditing procedures must adapt to better serve capital markets around the world.”

CBiz and Mayer Hoffman McCann PC announced the expansion of its not-for-profit practice through the acquisition of CPA David Brown Jr.’s Minneapolis-area practice.Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed. Brown and several of his associates will be located in the downtown Minneapolis office of CBIZ and MHM.

A committee within the International Federation of Accountants has drafted new guidance to assist companies and their professional accountants in developing and implementing a code of conduct.The proposed new good practice guidance, from the Professional Accountants in Business Committee, “Defining and Developing an Effective Code of Conduct,” provides practical guidance on design and development, as well as highlighting the roles accountants in business take in driving and supporting organizational ethics.

Michael Haubrich, is a certified financial planner with more than 20 years experience. He is the owner of Financial Service Group a fee-only firm in Racine, Wisconsin, with some 100 million dollars in assets under management.He tells a tale that recently he met with a new client who experienced “free financial planning.” According to Michael, the client’s free planning started with a free dinner meeting, followed by a free financial consultation, and then a free financial plan that ultimately ended with an annuity sale resulting in $9,000 in commission to that financial “consultant.”

In search of a happy medium for the smaller public companies that have loudly complained about the cost of audits of their internal controls, Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox said a new auditing standard is on the way.In an interview with the New York Times, Cox said that he has been in regular contact with the chairman of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board to develop and propose the auditing standard. Right now, Cox said that the timetable would be for the SEC to hopefully approve the standard by the spring.

A lack of practical implementation guidance and the incomplete nature of the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations’ 1992 framework -- in assessing effectiveness of internal controls over financial reporting -- are two of the key cost drivers for public companies complying with Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 (SOX) requirements, according to a new study.

The Big Four, plus major audit players Grant Thornton and BDO International, have joined forces to call for a new business reporting model.In a paper, the firms endorse the concept of accounting rules that are standards based, offering fewer details but giving more responsibility to auditors to interpret those rules. According to the six, the concept should lead to less fraud and more useful financial information -- and ideally protect their businesses from the liabilities audit work opens a firm up to.

With the close of 2006 approaching, we asked industry leaders to share their ideas of what the accounting profession will look like in five years: What will be its major concerns? Challenges? Hot new service areas? What will shape will the firm landscape have taken?

Merck & Co. disclosed four separate tax disputes that have combined potential liabilities for the drug maker of more than $5.5 billion.