The Canadian Accounting Standards Board has confirmed that use of International Financial Reporting Standards will be required in 2011 for publicly held profit-oriented companies.

Senator Jack Reed, D-R.I., has written letters to the heads of the Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board asking how to improve the transparency of the types of assets linked to subprime mortgages.

Intuit has released a report on the future of small business, predicting that artisans will re-emerge as an influential force in the coming decade, using technology and globalization to help them expand.

The House Committee on Small Business held a hearing on business activity taxes and their impact on small businesses.

XBRL US named Alfred R. Berkeley as the new chairman who will lead the board in 2008.

KPMG is holding a five-week competition among auditing students from more than 27 colleges and universities around the country.

A former PricewaterhouseCoopers auditor has settled charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission over his audits of video game developer Take-Two Interactive Software.

Catapult Communications Corporation recently announced that it is changing accounting firms. What was intriguing about the press release was the detailed reason given for changing from a Big Four to a regional firm. It made the change “to significantly reduce its accounting expenses.”

An appeals court has overruled $300,000 in penalties levied against accounting firm Grant Thornton in a case involving the firm's audit of the First National Bank of Keystone.

A study of internal auditors around the world has uncovered similarities and sharp differences within the profession.

The Foundation for Financial Planning has awarded nine new grants totaling $565,272. The grants went to:

Are you feeling overwhelmed by the task of sorting through a multitude of mutual funds to offer clients? Think of narrowing down the appropriate funds as a funneling process.This technique works for Sean Bergin, managing director of Citrin Cooperman Wealth Management Co., based in Philadelphia. For him, the key is to slim the selection down via a handful of requirements.

One dirty little secret of financial reporting is off-balance-sheet financing.

The challenges for creating an effective executive compensation package are many. The executive wants more pay but less taxation, while the company wants incentive-based benefits that bind the executive more closely to the company.The traditional solution for these needs is a nonqualified stock-option program. The executive gets both a potentially high payout and the ability to time the taxation of the payout. The employer likes the program because stock options are a cashless, incentive-based package with vesting restrictions.

Two accounting statements from the Financial Accounting Standards Board could have a large impact on accounting firms and their business clients, said accounting firm BDO Seidman.

The Governmental Accounting Standards Board has a host of complex projects on the docket for 2008. The first half of the year will see a few new documents, while the second half will entail mostly discussions.

A new report finds that the cost of compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404 internal control audit requirements for smaller public companies is actually about 14 percent lower than originally estimated.

The Internal Revenue Service hopes that new interim guidance for tax preparers will ease concerns over the expanded preparer penalties and heightened standards of conduct that must be met to avoid the penalties.

The Mortgage Forgiveness Debt Relief Act of 2007 has introduced a new paradigm of tax strategies for those who are falling behind on their home mortgage payments (or anticipate falling behind as the result of a pending adjustable rate mortgage reset).

The pace of accounting standards convergence is accelerating, and is being driven primarily by an investment community that is rapidly embracing International Financial Reporting Standards.