IRS ISSUES GUIDANCE FOR AUTOMATIC ROLLOVERS: The Internal Revenue Service has issued Notice 2005-5 providing guidance on the new automatic (or default) rollover rules for qualified retirement plans.

Two former accountants at WorldCom took the stand in Federal District Court in Manhattan in the criminal trial of the company's former chief executive, Bernard Ebbers.

Just in time for consideration by President Bush's new bipartisan panel on tax reform, National Taxpayer Advocate Nina Olson told Congress that the complexity of the Internal Revenue Code is the most serious problem facing both taxpayers and the Internal Revenue Service.

What's the difference between Enron and the United States government?

President George W. Bush has named two former senators to lead a new nine-member bipartisan panel charged with arriving at options to reform the tax code.

In an effort to aid smaller publicly traded businesses with internal controls compliance, the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations said that it would offer online guidance for internal controls assessment by the summer.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board is going back to that deep, dark place where accounting standards come from - the conceptual framework that underlies it all.

We have been writing on the Conceptual Framework in response to the Financial Accounting Standards Board's announced intent to strengthen it. We've discussed the objective of financial reporting, the political situation and its problems, the overarching importance of cash flows, and the nature of relevance and reliability.

Securities and Exchange Commission chief accountant Donald Nicolaisen is scheduled to testify this week before a House subcommittee about the commission's decision that Fannie Mae violated accounting rules.

In his State of the Union address this week, President Bush pushed his plan to overhaul Social Security and add optional private accounts for younger workers, as the White House unveiled some new details of how that plan would work.

Holtz Rubenstein Reminick LLP, based here, has expanded its litigation and valuation services group via a merger with Long Island-based Rand Consulting Group Inc., a boutique firm specializing in litigation support, forensic accounting and valuation services.

American Express Co. said that it will spin-off its American Express Financial Advisors unit to shareholders to focus on its credit cards, charge cards and travel services businesses.

The U.S. occupation authority in Iraq tasked with overseeing the use of money appropriated by Congress for relief and reconstruction there didn't have proper accounting controls for $8.8 billion in funds, a report released this week alleged.

Most chief executives of America's fastest-growing private companies say that they're likely to step down within the next 10 years, but almost half have put little to no thought into succession planning, according to a survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Fannie Mae has reportedly recruited former Securities and Exchange Commission chair Richard C. Breeden to help it deal with a potential $9 billion restatement, while its former chief executive has relinquished two board seats.

A former partner at Big Four firm Ernst & Young was sentenced to a year in federal prison and a $5,000 fine after pleading guilty to tampering with audit records for NextCard Inc., an issuer of online credit cards, the AP reported. As part of the sentence, Thomas Trauger, 42, must also undergo two years of supervised release. He is scheduled to be taken into custody March 30. He initially faced up to five years in prison. In October, Trauger confessed to tampering with the now-bankrupt NextCard's audit records after regulators had raised doubts about NextCard's accounting practices. He was charged with subsequently destroying key documents in an effort to mask the fraudulent changes.

The American Institute of CPAs named Ben Neuhausen, national director of accounting at BDO Seidman, as chairman-elect of its Accounting Standards Executive Committee.Neuhausen will succeed KPMG's Mark Bilstein in that post following the conclusion of the next AcSEC meeting.As an AcSEC member, Neuhausen chaired the AICPA task force on real estate time-share transactions. He also has served as a member of FASB's Interpretation 46 Resource Group and its Liabilities and Equities Resource Group. From 1979 to 1981, he was a Financial Accounting Standards Board fellow.Prior to joining BDO in 2002, Neuhausen was a partner in the Professional Standards Group at Andersen.The institute's AcSEC unit provides accounting guidance and serves as the organization's voice on financial reporting matters. It includes members from academia, business and industry, and public practice.

A critic from Washington-based think tank the American Enterprise Institute has called on Congress to terminate the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board within five years and fold the oversight body into the Securities and Exchange Commission.

With the audit implosion at the Roslyn, N.Y., school district still reverberating in the profession's ears, American Institute of CPAs president and chief executive Barry Melancon warned some 400 attendees at a conference here that the resulting backlash of a nonprofit scandal could be as devastating to the profession as the ruins left by Enron and WorldCom.

The American Institute of CPAs' Auditing Standards Board is poised to issue an exposure draft of five proposed statements and amendments to statements relating to auditors' risk assessment.