Regulatory actions and programs

The U.S. Small Business Administration said that homeowners, renters, nonprofit organizations and businesses have one more month to submit disaster loan applications for damage caused by the severe storms and tornadoes on April 4.

A week after proposing requirements for public companies to start filing their financial statements with interactive data tags, the Securities and Exchange Commission wants mutual fund companies to begin filing risk and return information using the technology.

The Financial Accounting Foundation has tapped Teresa S. Polley as its new president and chief operating officer.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has broadened financing opportunities for small businesses by adopting a rule amendment under the Investment Company Act.

The American Institute of CPAs outlined plans to simplify the plethora of auditing standards and eliminate any that had no clear objective.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed civil fraud charges against eight former executives of AOL Time Warner, blaming them for causing the company to overstate advertising revenue by more than $1 billion via round-trip accounting transactions.

With accounting standards moving toward convergence around the world, some accounting firms are beginning to worry that the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards could lead to litigation.

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.

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.

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.