The American Institute of CPAs passed a resolution at its Spring Council meeting voting to recognize the International Accounting Standards Board in London as the international accounting and financial reporting standards-setter.

The preliminary report of the U.S. Treasury Committee on the Auditing Profession was released in March.It’s a well-prepared wish list of how to improve the auditing profession. Unfortunately, the report envisions solutions that have little or no chance of being instituted any time soon.

AICPA REVISES PEER REVIEWThe American Institute of CPAs has issued revised standards for performing and reporting on peer reviews, along with interpretations of those standards.

We’re not sure if we’re having another epiphany, or merely looking at the world a little bit differently, but we have some thoughts on an area of accounting practice and theory that we’d like to share with you.Specifically, we’re looking deeper at the worthiness of comparability as a goal for financial reporting information. As we described in a recent column questioning the wisdom of merging all standard-setting authority in one body, it has been traditionally assumed that useful information helps users compare competing investment opportunities. Think of this notion of comparability as Company A and Company B balanced on a seesaw, suggesting that the investor’s decision is between buying one company’s stock or the other’s.

In recent months, captives have come to the forefront of the insurance industry.As a result, there has been increased interest in what they are, the benefits that they provide, and if they are a viable option for companies.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged the former CEO and CFO of Broadcom with stock options backdating, along with the chip maker’s chairman and general counsel.

Ernst & Young is developing a curriculum to help accounting students learn about International Financial Reporting Standards.

A White House memo directing agencies to finalize their rules before the fall election could have an impact on plans for the use of Extensible Business Reporting Language and International Financial Reporting Standards in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Senate Finance Committee has proposed a new tax bill that seeks to prevent the Alternative Minimum Tax from spreading to more taxpayers next tax season.The bill, sponsored by committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and ranking member Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, increases the AMT exemption amount to $46,200 for individuals and $69,950 for joint filers. It allows the use of personal credits to keep taxpayers who don’t currently pay the AMT from being snared by the tax.

As the Governmental Accounting Standards Board began grappling with concepts in reporting governmental service efforts and accomplishments, or SEA, it knew traditional financial statements didn’t provide a complete picture of government performance.After all, not everything that a government does can be measured in dollars and cents, so should GASB write standards for things that are not measured monetarily?

Section 7216, a part of the Internal Revenue Code since 1971, imposes criminal penalties on tax return preparers who knowingly or recklessly make unauthorized disclosures or uses of information furnished in connection with the preparation of an income tax return.A violation of the section is not to be taken lightly — it comes with a penalty of up to a year’s imprisonment or a fine of not more than $1,000, or both.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has issued an invitation to comment on how it might proceed toward simplifying the measurement of complex financial instruments.The invitation comes amid a global controversy over whether current reporting on some financial instruments at fair value may be causing volatility in securities and credit markets. The issue at FASB, however, is over the perplexing varieties of measurement.

The financial advisor of the future must go beyond today's conventional wisdom to favor a more complete risk management framework that better recognizes the retirement income needs of millions of retirees, says The Retirement Income Industry Association (RIIA), a national, not-for-profit organization whose members are defining the future of retirement security in the United States. RIIA's chairman and executive director Francois Gadenne, points out that the association has already developed a job description for financial advisors that he believes is more relevant to the practical challenges that retirees are now beginning to confront. "In order to be effective in the future, financial advisors seeking to provide the best possible results for their clients must embrace a host of new responsibilities and personal professional skills. And, based on feedback that financial advisors have brought to RIIA, they are concerned about helping investors plan, implement, and manage their retirement to achieve and maintain a desired standard of living over the long term. That's a complex task which calls for new insight and education." The association’s director, David Macchia, explains that the advisor's job description has expanded significantly. "The advisor must have the skills to not only help investors accumulate financial capital--such as savings, investments, insurance, annuities, and IRAs--but also to understand the changing roles of financial capital combined with human capital (wages and earnings) and social capital (social security, support from family or friends, defined benefit plans) as investors address their retirement income security needs." RIIA says foresees a new dimension of professional advisor education that will be called for in light of the shifting challenges confronting retirees. To support advisors in maintaining a high degree of proficiency in retirement income planning, including specialized professional education that provides the skills and insights needed in the years ahead, RIIA is developing a Retirement Income Management Body of Knowledge. This curriculum, it notes, will match specific learning objectives with practice management skills derived from a Retirement Management Professional job description and leading to a Retirement Management Analyst™ (RMA) designation. Elvin Turner, its director, asserts that the association’s expanding body of knowledge is the key to addressing financial advisors' concerns about delivering comprehensive retirement income planning to their clients. "Ethics and practice management skills are foundational elements of RIIA's body of knowledge. The reason is to help RMA designation candidates sharpen their ethical behavior and practice skills needed to address retirement needs in an effective and objective fashion." According to Gadenne, the ability to identify the vital attributes of tomorrow's successful financial advisors is attributable to what he feels is the association’s unique perspective in the financial services industry. "RIIA and its members have been able to view across silos by pulling down barriers between product and process, manufacturer and distributor, academic and business, to achieve a needs-based perspective that would otherwise not be possible. It is this perspective that is driving the definition of prudent retirement planning, including the skill set that advisors must maintain and refine over time." For more information, visit www.riia-usa.org.

Deloitte has formed an International Financial Reporting Standards University Consortium to help bring IFRS into more college classrooms.

Sage Software's product release dates and marketing and sales initiatives were all on the agenda Tuesday morning during one of two divisional keynotes given during the business management software provider's annual partner confab, Insights 2008.

The Internal Revenue Service has published the 2009 inflation-adjusted deduction limits for health savings accounts.

The Securities and Exchange Commission voted at an open meeting to propose that companies begin filing financial statements in an interactive tagged format as early as next year.

Nearly 75 percent of CFOs and senior comptrollers have no experience using International Financial Reporting Standards, while 55 percent are unfamiliar with the Extensible Business Reporting Language, according to a new survey by Grant Thornton.

With so many accounting standards, it can be hard to keep up with them all.

With convergence to a single set of global accounting rules an inevitability as opposed to a possibility, it’s up to standards setters and regulators to put forth guidelines that are not only the best that can be written, but also ones that shed unnecessary complexity.