After a storm of protest from banking interests against the principle of booking asset values at a forced exit price for fear of a potential downward spiral in asset values, bankers in the European Union have eased their position on the fair value principle.Following a meeting held at the European Parliament Financial Services Forum here, banks are finally warming to the fair value platform with discussions on mark-to-model techniques for evaluating assets in illiquid markets.

Accounting for hedging activities has never been easy, but by year’s end, if a proposal from the Financial Accounting Standards Board meets approval, it might get a little simpler.FASB has proposed an amendment to Statement 133, Accounting for Derivative Instruments and Hedging Activities. The proposed statement, Accounting for Hedging Activities, issued as an exposure draft, would eliminate most of the many methods of hedge accounting. The result: financial statements that are simpler, more transparent and more comparable.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has adopted rules requiring audit firms to submit reports at least once a year on fees, disciplinary actions and other information that will be posted on its Web site.Each of the more than 1,800 public accounting firms registered with the PCAOB must provide basic information about audit reports issued during the year and the disciplinary history of people who have joined the firm during that time. They must also report information about fees billed to audit clients in various categories of services as a percentage of the firm’s total fees billed.

The proposed regulations on preparer penalties, released on June 17, are the latest iteration of rules that tax practitioners should consider carefully when recommending and executing tax strategies. Not heeding them can result in stiff penalties or, worse, the loss of the right to continue to practice tax law and serious damage to a firm’s reputation in the client community.The simple reality is that those responsible for recommending prospective tax strategies are almost always drawn back into the matter by the signing return preparer once the transaction is completed. They are asked about tax benefit matters what was intended and whether things turn out as expected. That after-the-fact advice is enough to subject the practitioner to the label “return preparer” for purposes of the preparer penalties.

In a significant step toward more solid and relevant accounting standards around the world, the International Accounting Standards Board and the Financial Accounting Standards Board have rolled out two joint discussion documents that may indicate where the boards are going in their project to improve and converge their conceptual frameworks.One document, The Objective of Financial Reporting and Qualitative Characteristics and Constraints of Decision-Useful Financial Reporting Information, is a proposal for the first two chapters of the framework. The other is a preliminary views document that suggests directions the board might take on defining the reporting entity.

In this third installment in our Mythbusters series (with credit to the Discovery Channel show, MythBusters), we turn to the oft-repeated but seldom-scrutinized notion that reporting values in financial statements creates volatility.This idea has been in the spotlight because of the recent financial crisis, with one myth-monger after another blaming the Financial Accounting Standards Board and anyone but themselves for financial institutions’ crashing stock prices. They say that mark-to-market accounting made it look like these entities were going into the tank. How much better it would be, they said, if the collateralized debt obligations were just carried at their cost so things wouldn’t look so bad. And if they didn’t look so bad, we’d all be better off.

I just came across a rather interesting Web site that I thought I would share with you. It’s called ValueForum.com. It’s an online investment forum geared toward allowing the free-flow of information among investors. The site provides a discussion forum where members can immediately gain access to more than 1,500 other members to talk about individual stocks, mutual funds, market sectors (i.e. energy), economic conditions (i.e. housing market), and any number of other topics that affect the everyday investor. The company says that the members on this site are all screened rigorously to ensure that no one is there to “product push” or gain anything besides knowledge. These members, the company notes, range from experienced individual investors to financial professionals and even those new to investment. The majority of the forum members are between the ages of 55 & 65 while over 20 percent are 65+…retirees, or many who are of retirement age but are still employed. A few of the offerings that ValueForum.com brings to the table are an active discussion forum, where with over 125 discussion topics, members can post a discussion question/topic to create a forum of open and free-flowing discussion. These discussions are listed in chronological order and by topic. There is also what is called shared portfolios whereby users can view the holdings of other ValueForum.com users, or share their own portfolios with the group. Members can also view the latest news on the stocks within each of the shared portfolios. Moreover, they can choose to contribute to the “Community Portfolio Project,” a portfolio built solely on the picks of members who wish to share their portfolios with others. Then too, there is a stock-picking contest where members participate in quarterly or year-long contests in which they choose a handful of stocks and a desired weight. Prizes are then given at the end of each contest period to the members with the highest performing portfolios. And finally, there are group polls by which members can create a poll question to their peers, answer questions posted by other members, and view results of all poll questions posted. ValueForum was formed in 2003 by Adam Menzel, Ben Nobel, and Daniel Pedisich. They created the site with the belief that the power of collaboration leads to better investment decisions. They say that there have always been investment clubs where people physically get together in a room every week, but now there is a way to bring people together from all over the country, and the world, to one spot in order to share their ideas. The benefit, they note, is a collaboration of cultural diversity, different work experiences, and varying investment experiences. The power of “group thinking” benefits those investors managing their own portfolio as well as those managing accounts for clients, says the company. Members immediately gain access to a wealth of knowledge about different industries to help them in their due diligence and analysis on investments, sectors, and the like. Now, in the interests of fair disclosure, I am not advocating or “pushing” this in any way. I simply am imparting information about such a site and you can take it from there.

VSP Vision Care has hired former U.S. Solicitor General Ken Starr to represent the eye care insurance provider in an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court on its tax-exempt status.

The assets of the Institute of Business Appraisers have been transferred to an investment partnership made up of its former rival, the National Association of Certified Valuation Analysts, along with valuation software developer ValuSource and some unidentified partners.

Online payroll provider PayCycle introduced a “pay-as-you-go” premium payment service for workers’ compensation insurance aimed at accountants’ small business clients.

Automobile donations have sharply declined since 2004, when Congress tightened the tax rules for claiming charitable deductions, according to an analysis of IRS data by Grant Thornton.

The Schonbraun McCann Group LLP has changed its name to Cornerstone Accounting Group LLP and announced some management changes.

The presidential race has produced an interesting series of charges and counter-charges about the candidates' tax policies, and lately they've involved taxes on small business owners.

Energy company El Paso Corp., its subsidiaries and five former employees settled fraud charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission for improperly inflating proven oil and gas reserves and providing misleading financial statements.

Maybe because I am so literal, I am a firm believer in transparency. Perhaps that was why I was intrigued by a newsletter from a leading firm association that goes to association members and friends. Included was a two-pager entitled “Vision for Our Future,” that identifies ten possible goals of the association for 2008-2012. The process, which included member surveys, conference calls, and meetings, was also detailed. The proposed goals were developed by a 15-member team and facilitator, all listed in the two-pager.

Job satisfaction among financial planners remains high, with 96 percent of financial planners saying they are "satisfied" or "very satisfied" with their career choice, according to an annual survey.

Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., has proposed a tax credit for small businesses that offer health insurance to their employees.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke and Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson expressed their support for the convergence of International Financial Reporting Standards with U.S. generally accepted accounting principles.

CPA Wealth Provider's second ranking of firms by AUM has now been published and it’s bigger and better than ever. As you know, AUM is a term originally employed by financial services companies in the mutual fund and money management or investment management business to gauge how much money they were managing. Many financial services companies used this as both a measure of success and comparison against their competitors; in lieu of revenue, they had total assets under management. For readers of the publication, last October it presented the first-ever ranking of such firms by AUM. The initial response was staggering. It had 89 responses so it tried again and now the responses are no longer staggering—they are stupendous! CPA Wealth Provider more than doubled last year’s count and reached the 200 mark which included a batch of firms who unfortunately couldn’t get their survey forms completed in time for this closing. Because of this response, the publication decided to break the numbers down into sections and to specifically indicate each section. There are now 18 firms in the Billion Dollar Club (termed Wealth Magnet Elite), 87 in the $100+ Billion Club (termed Wealth Magnet Select), and another 37 in the $50+ Million Club plus a whole host of Rising Stars and Ones to Watch. But most importantly of all, take a look at the firms on the charts. They practically mirror the entire CPA/financial planning industry—from geographic location to size to AUM numbers to affiliations to recommended financial planning products. What does this show? Exactly what we felt all along—the financial planning industry is a tiger by the tail. We see this at various conferences and trade shows where copies of this publication literally fly off the racks. We are also getting tons of communiqués from readers as to how well they like the magazine and leading experts in the field constantly inquire about contributing articles. You can see this by the varied mix of authors and subjects. I firmly believe that CPA Wealth Provider remains the leading national publication for CPAs involved in financial planning.

Sen. Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, ranking member of the Senate Finance Committee, provided an update this week on his correspondence with several media-based ministries about issues related to their tax-exempt status, indicating that some ministries have not been answering his questions.