Regulatory actions and programs

Internal accountants and other corporate employees who report financial wrongdoing at their companies may not be able to count on Sarbanes-Oxley Act "whistleblower" provisions to protect them from retaliation.Although those provisions were inserted into the law by Congress to encourage corporate insiders to step forward and report accounting or securities fraud, a new analysis by researchers at the University of Nebraska College of Law found gaping holes in the SOX whistleblower protections.

The European Union has rebuffed the International Accounting Standards Board's proposed standards for small to midsized businesses, labeling the package "too complicated" for the nature of SMBs."The feedback we have received from member states, the European Parliament and stakeholders is that the current IASB draft is not simple enough to be applicable for the bulk of SMBs in the EU," said EU Commissioner for Internal Markets Charlie McCreevy. "Therefore, at this stage, I do not intend to propose that the IASB draft be endorsed for application in the EU."

The Internal Revenue Service position on Circular 230 monetary penalties has generated concern and comments from the American Institute of CPAs, while the American Bar Association Tax Section intends to submit its own comments on the matter.The penalties were announced in Notice 2007-39 earlier this year to implement Section 822 of the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004, which expanded the sanctions that the IRS can impose for certain prohibited conduct to include monetary penalties.

Concerned that companies are investing much in internal controls but then risking it all by not monitoring those controls, COSO, the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations of the Treadway Commission, has issued a discussion document that may eventually become a full set of guidelines on monitoring.COSO chairman Larry Rittenberg said he has been pondering this project ever since the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002's Section 404 went into effect.

Life insurance agents and companies have always tried to find ways of making costs paid by business owners tax deductible.The situation became ridiculous a few years ago with outrageous claims about how Sections 419A(f)(5) and (6) of the Internal Revenue Code exempted employers from any tax-deduction limitations. Finally, the Internal Revenue Service put a stop to such egregious misrepresentations in 2002 by issuing regulations and naming such plans as "potentially abusive tax shelters" (or "listed transactions") that needed to be registered and disclosed to the IRS.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board's Standing Advisory Group met to discuss reports addressing the audit implications of International Financial Reporting Standards in SEC filings, as well as changes in market responses to financial restatements post-Sarbanes-Oxley.

Gerrit Zalm, the former deputy prime minister and finance minister of the Netherlands, has been selected as the new chairman of the trustees of the International Accounting Standards Committee Foundation, which oversees the International Accounting Standards Board, in a sign of the growing influence of the European Union on the standards-setting process.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has issued staff guidance on auditing internal controls in smaller public companies, allowing less complex companies to adjust more easily to a recently issued auditing standard for Sarbanes-Oxley compliance.

Wolters Kluwer Tax and Accounting has signed an agreement to buy TeamMate from PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Deloitte Touche Tomatsu said its aggregate member firm revenue increased by a record 15.5 percent to $23.1 billion for the fiscal year ended May 31.

Nortel Networks has agreed to pay $35 million to settle accounting fraud charges with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has approved amendments that would reduce the frequency of inspections of accounting firms that do not regularly issue audit reports.

Chief financial officers and senior comptrollers want more options for selecting audit firms, according to a survey released by one of those auditing firms, Grant Thornton.

The risk assessment standards, FIN 48, valuation standards, convergence, the rewriting and codification of auditing and accounting standards, ethics interpretations, and other changes impacting the accounting and auditing regulatory landscape are being driven by a number of factors. But when push comes to shove on implementation, the burden squarely falls on the companies that these rules apply to, and on CPA firms’ A&A practice group and A&A practitioners.

The Treasury Department convened an initial meeting of its Advisory Committee on the Auditing Profession as the department aims to improve the competitiveness of the U.S. capital markets.

The European Union is putting the brakes on a push to converge accounting standards by delaying until the end of 2011 the need for companies to use international standards.

Barry Melancon has been leading the American Institute of CPAs since 1995. As president and CEO of the AICPA, he has been keeping busy on a number of fronts this past year. The Institute has been working with Congress on patent reform to keep tax strategy patents from taking hold. Another priority has been CPA mobility, so CPAs face fewer regulatory barriers when practicing across different states. Melancon has also been closely involved with the effort to move toward Extensible Business Reporting Language for financial statements, spearheading an initiative to assign data tags to generally accepted accounting principles. He was recently named co-vice chair of the Center for Audit Quality and to a position on the Treasury Department's new Advisory Committee on the Audit Profession. Melancon is also a member of the AICPA's delegation to the International Federation of Accountants. His accounting career began in 1979 at Bergeron & Co. in Louisiana. Before joining the AICPA, he served for eight years as executive director of the Society of Louisiana CPAs.

Internal auditors are being stretched thin with demands for not only increased financial reporting compliance, but also work related to fraud detection, contracts, transactions and business performance improvement, according to a new survey.

The American Institute of CPAs has begun a two- to three-year project to revise its auditing standards in an effort to achieve greater clarity.

Securities and Exchange Commission Chairman Christopher Cox said that regulators in different countries should avoid revising International Financial Reporting Standards to meet the needs of local markets.