Regulatory actions and programs

Ernst & Young and Grant Thornton may find themselves fending off legal claims of professional negligence and fraud from Refco shareholders in the wake of a report from the defunct financial company's bankruptcy examiner.

The Securities and Exchange Commission won't require amended filings to correct misclassifications of a new Financial Accounting Standards Board standard for defined-benefit pension plans, says a recent alert from the AICPA's Center for Audit Quality.The new standard, SFAS 158, requires that employers move any surpluses or deficits in their retirement benefit plan funding off the footnotes and onto the face of the balance sheet, while making an adjustment in the ending balance of "accumulated other comprehensive income."

The Institute of Internal Auditors has appointed Gerald D. Cox as chairman of the board and elected a slate of other board members.Cox heads the internal audit partnership at South West Audit Partnership in Yeovil, U.K. Joining him on the board is Patricia K. Miller, a partner at Deloitte & Touche in Pleasant Hill, Calif., who was elected as senior vice chairwoman.

The Securities and Exchange Commission voted to adopt a sweeping anti-fraud rule that targets money managers who deliberately mislead investors.The new rule, which was first proposed by the SEC in December, also has been expanded to include hedge funds.

The IRS said it is reconsidering some of the private letter rulings its associate chief counsel’s office has issued regarding the gift tax consequences of trusts that employ distribution committees.The IRS’s chief counsel has discovered that some of the conclusions in the rulings may disagree with some prior revenue rules.

I first came across the term a number of years ago when consultants stressed to me the importance of identifying where a business was in its life cycle. These consultants believed businesses and industries have a life cycle, and the key is identifying where the business is at that time. In the case of a business, its life cycle includes progressive identifiable stages, such as the “seed,” start-up, growth, established, etc.

A survey of internal auditors around the world found increasing adherence to standardization and a growing impact on organizational governance and risk management.

Accounting firm Spear Safer has agreed to pay $3.5 million to settle allegations of improperly auditing a financial company, Mutual Benefits, accused of defrauding 30,000 investors out of $830 million.

Small business concerns over Sarbanes-Oxley Act compliance resurfaced on Capitol Hill as the Securities and Exchange Commission and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board came under new pressure to delay costly and cumbersome internal control audit requirements on small companies for at least another year.At the beginning of a new round of congressional hearings, House Small Business Committee chair Nydia M. Velázquez, D-N.Y., called on both the SEC and the PCAOB to scuttle plans to implement a freshly revised set of SOX rules.

E&Y DISMISSED AS CYGNE AUDITORCygne Designs, a New York-based clothier, dismissed its auditor, Big Four firm Ernst & Young, and named Mahoney Cohen & Co. as its new independent accountant.

This column is approximately the 250th that has appeared under the title of "The Spirit of Accounting." Paul Miller has been around for all of them, and Paul Bahnson for the latest 150. As we were looking ahead to what to write about next, we looked back to the first few columns we published to see whether their messages might still be relevant for today.It turns out that they were, and we thought it would be insightful to reprint this one that first appeared in September 2000. One of the issues being debated at that time was the question of whether non-audit fees could compromise auditor independence. In those days, Enron was considered to be an amazing company, instead of the economic disaster that we now know was going to happen in 2001.

Big Four firm PricewaterhouseCoopers agreed to pay $225 million to settle a securities and accounting fraud class-action lawsuit brought by Tyco shareholders. The accounting giant's payment, combined with Tyco's share, will bring the total amount of the settlement to $3.2 billion including interest, according to the three law firms representing the plaintiffs: Grant & Eisenhofer, Schiffrin Barroway Topaz & Kessler, and Milberg Weiss.

Little Rock, Ark. - Arkansas accounting giant Moore Stephens Frost has acquired a North Carolina firm, Lynch and Howard.

A bill before the Connecticut State Senate would give its state comptroller the legal authority to establish generally accepted accounting principles for the state's financials, thereby sidestepping the Governmental Accounting Standards Board - the standard-setter for governments and municipalities.Proponents said that GASB's accounting rules make it hard to achieve a balanced budget, which Connecticut requires.

Pension fund disclosures will soon look more like those of other post-employment benefits under a new statement issued by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board.Statement 50, Pension Disclosures, amends Statement 25, on reporting on defined-benefit pension plans, and Statement 27, on accounting for pensions by governmental employers. The amendments make disclosures under those two statements consistent with the requirements of Statements 43, on reporting OPEB, and 45, on reporting on OPEB by governmental employers.

Think you've come up with a perfect tax strategy for your high-end clients? Before you go ahead with it, you might want to check if it's been patented. You're liable to be sued for patent infringement if someone else thought of it first.It all started in 1998, when a federal appeals court ruled that business methods could be patented. Since then, more than 60 tax-strategy patents have been granted, and 86 more are pending. And the first infringement suit has been filed over the SOGRAT patent.

One way to judge which are the most significant provisions in the Small Business and Work Opportunity Tax Act of 2007 - signed by President Bush on May 25, 2007, as part of a larger bill focused on war funding - is to look at which provisions are projected to cost the most or to raise the most revenue.The tax breaks included in this legislation are fully paid for with revenue increases. The main premise behind the legislation is that small business should receive some tax breaks to help offset the cost of being required to pay workers more due to the minimum wage increase. It would be a rare small business that finds that the cost of increasing the minimum wage for its workers is fully offset by the tax breaks included in the legislation.

Two auditing standards boards and an association of accounting academics are moving forward with a research project that could lead to significant changes in the content and phrasing of audit reports, perhaps even in the procedure of the audit itself.Concerned that investors and others may be misinterpreting the typical three-paragraph audit report, the boards are seeking a better understanding of what people think they're reading. In many cases, according to the American Institute of CPAs' director of auditing and attestation, Chuck Landes, some readers of audit reports are apparently seeing things that aren't there.

Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell vetoed a bill passed by the state legislature that would have allowed Connecticut to set its own accounting standards to balance the budget.

A Greenville, S.C. federal judge has permanently barred Robert Barnwell Clarkson and his "Patriot Network" from promoting tax fraud schemes, the Justice Department announced. The court found that Clarkson falsely instructed Patriot Network members that they need not file federal income tax returns, and helped members obstruct Internal Revenue Service efforts to collect taxes. In seeking the permanent injunction, the Justice Department submitted Clarkson's Untaxing Packet, which he sold for $300. The packet contained form letters that he falsely claimed would exempt purchases from federal tax laws. Papers filed in the case showed that Clarkson boasted that he "untaxed" more than 8,000 people over 30 years. The court detailed Clarkson's efforts at interfering with tax collection, including his instruction to transfer property to nominees and to sue IRS agents who attempt to collect taxes. Clarkson, a disbarred attorney from Anderson, S.C., has twice been convicted of federal tax-related crimes. The court ordered Clarkson to give copies of the injunction to people who bought his products and to post the injunction on the Patriot Network Web site.