Victor Hugo once wrote that the one thing more powerful than all the armies on earth was an idea whose time has come.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board and the American Institute of CPAs issued a proposal aimed at improving the financial reporting process for private companies.

The profits of companies with difficult-to-read annual reports are lower in following years, according to a study by a University of Michigan business professor.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed securities fraud charges against three former executives of national restaurant chain Buca Inc., which operates the Buca di Beppo and Vinny T's of Boston national restaurant chains.

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced that securities lawyer Andrew N. Vollmer will serve as the agency's deputy general counsel.

Outside of tax preparation, few facets of accounting are as complicated and change as frequently as retirement and estate planning. Partly that is because of the enormous implications of taxes on these two areas. But it is also due to the changing demands of clients with each new generation of retirees.At this, the outset of the Baby Boomer generation, it is clear that clients are less responsive to complex reports and more interested in simple processes which they can participate in and understand via their own computers or over the Internet. Vendors of retirement and estate planning systems have responded to this need with a host of new collaboration tools and a dramatic improvement in comprehension for both the process and its reports.

A plan participant sometimes wants to provide a survivor annuity for a non-spouse beneficiary who is a child or other close relative of the participant, or a significant other who is not a spouse.Caution: If the participant has a spouse, a survivor annuity for a non-spouse beneficiary can be provided only if the spouse consents.

TRADING FUTURES ON DEBT SECURITIES: The Securities and Exchange Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission have jointly proposed rules that would permit trading of futures on debt indexes in an effort to create a new class of tradable derivatives contracts.Futures contracts on debt indices that are allowed under the proposed rules would trade on futures exchanges subject to regulation by the CFTC. Securities futures on debt securities could be traded on futures exchanges and securities exchanges subject to regulation by the CFTC and the SEC. Under current regulations, trading futures on debt indices is essentially prohibited.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board announced that it has scheduled a Standing Advisory Group meeting for June 12 and 13 in Washington.

The European Union's sales tax losses, now loosely estimated to have reached $120 billion per year and continuing to grow, are causing deepening concern among tax consultant professionals in Europe.In the U.S., high rates of sales tax losses due to exemptions on Internet shopping across state boundaries cost the authorities only a fraction of the losses in the EU, because rates are low compared with Europe's equivalent rates, which center around 20 percent.

With quixotic courage, the Governmental Accounting Standards Board has issued a preliminary views document on one of accounting's most confounding issues - reporting on derivatives.The suggested standard would require governmental financial statements to report derivatives at fair value in the balance sheet, unless the instrument is effectively hedging the risk that it was issued to offset. In such cases, the derivative's fair value would be reported in the balance sheet as either deferred charges or deferred credits, with no effect of fair value changes on the change statement.

In its first exercise of a new due process policy, the Financial Accounting Standards Board's Emerging Issues Task Force has issued three exposure drafts of proposed consensuses. The documents deal with accounting for contingently convertible, or CoCo, financial instruments, sabbaticals, and taxes.In the past, the task force has issued exposure drafts only when an issue seemed controversial or significant enough to warrant public comment. Under the new due process, all task force abstracts will be exposed for comment before being submitted to the board for final ratification.

IVAX RETAINS PWC: Ivax Diagnostics Inc., a Miami-based manufacturer and marketer of scientific instruments, medical diagnostic and autoimmune kits, has retained Big Four firm PricewaterhouseCoopers as its independent accountant.PwC succeeds Ernst & Young as Ivax's auditor.

After months of lobbying from businesses, it's beginning to appear that there's been some progress made in getting the Securities and Exchange Commission to reconsider parts of a proposal requiring companies to disclose the earnings of executives.

The Heroes Earned Retirement Opportunities Act has passed through Congress and is expected to be signed into law by President Bush. The bill would allow excluded combat pay to be treated as compensation under IRA contribution rules.

More than 80 percent of financial planners who hold the CFP certification have a high level of career satisfaction, though the profession's 2005 reported median earnings of $232,995 revealed a noticeable drop-off from the previous year.

In a 5-4 vote, the Supreme Court said that public employees do not have blanket rights to file lawsuits as part of whistleblower protections outlined under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

President Bush has nominated the chairman and chief executive of investment banking firm Goldman Sachs, Henry M. Paulson Jr., as Treasury Secretary.

I couldn't believe the number of American Idol votes. The voters couldn't have been just those in their teens and twenties. Perhaps it isn't a coincidence that the votes were being cast as I was flying back from attending the AICPA Spring Council meeting in Salt Lake City.

Public companies working on national defense or national security issues can now get an exemption from the reporting requirements governed by the Securities and Exchange Commission from the director of national intelligence.