Regulatory actions and programs

The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said that the Securities and Exchange Commission is overstepping its bounds in seeking to punish corporate wrongdoing.

The Securities and Exchange Commission announced a series of roundtables that will be held throughout the year, with a focus on speeding the implementation of new Internet tools to help provide investors and analysts with better financial information about companies and funds.

Online fraud and the use of the Internet to perpetrate insider trading, market manipulations and other securities violations will be the focus of the Securities and Exchange Commission Historical Society's first "Fireside Chat" for 2006.

The American Enterprise Institute will host a morning conference, titled " Sarbanes-Oxley: What Have We Learned?" on March 13.

Kroger Co., the largest supermarket company in the country, will restate its earnings for the past three years for errors in accounting of deferred taxes.

The Securities and Exchange Commission Advisory Committee on Smaller Public Companies has published an exposure draft of its final report, outlining changes to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act for micro-cap and small-cap public companies.

The doubling of restatements by U.S. companies last year could signal that the changes made under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act are having their intended impact.

After halting subpoenas issued to two Dow Jones & Co. columnists on Feb. 7, the Securities and Exchange Commission announced that its staff is preparing guidelines for demanding information from journalists.

The Auditing Standards Board of the American Institute of CPAs has approved eight new statements on auditing standards, collectively referred to as the risk assessment standards.

The head of the Securities and Exchange Commission said that he was not consulted before his agency's enforcement division subpoenaed two writers for Dow Jones & Co.

In mid-January, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board issued reports on its 2004 inspections of Grant Thornton LLP and Crowe Chizek & Co. LLC - outlining "audit deficiencies" similar to other recently released reviews from the board.In its Grant Thornton inspection report, released on January 19, the board highlighted problems that it found in audits for 15 of the firm's public company clients between May and October 2004. The problems included failure to disclose related-party transactions and testing of information technology controls, as well as accounting problems for:

BROOKLYN FEDERAL JETTISONS KPMG: Brooklyn Federal Bancorp, the parent to Brooklyn Federal Savings Bank, dismissed its auditor, Big Four firm KPMG, and retained Beard Miller Co. as its replacement.According to a federal filing, KPMG's audit reports on Brooklyn Federal's financials didn't contain any adverse opinion or disclaimer of opinion. There were no disagreements between KPMG and the company over accounting matters.

When the Auditing Standards Board met in mid-January, it resolved to propose a new standard on auditor communication. The board also started a discussion on whether quality control should be linked to compensation control.While the proposal on communication was the biggest product of the meeting, the concept of a cause-and-effect connection between auditor compensation and audit quality may ultimately have greater reverberations in the profession.

The California Board of Accountancy has agreed to ease adopted practice privilege requirements in the state that went into effect Jan. 1.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has issued a proposal providing companies with the option to report financial assets and liabilities at fair value.The board said that the change is aimed at simplifying accounting, as well as reducing the earnings volatility caused by differences in existing accounting rules. The new standard would allow companies to measure financial assets and liabilities at fair value selected on a contract-by-contract basis.

A memo out of the Internal Revenue Service's Office of Chief Counsel makes the case that gender reassignment surgery cannot be deducted as a medical expense for tax purposes. The case, involving male-to-female gender reassignment surgery, is currently under consideration by the IRS Office of Appeals.The advice memorandum says that the taxpayer deducted an unspecified amount in expenses - including payments for various doctors, hormone treatments, psychotherapy, health insurance, transportation and lodging in connection with the surgery. Although the taxpayer appears to have offered extensive medical and legal documentation behind the decision to have the procedure, the chief counsel opinion offers legal support for the original IRS revenue agent defining the procedure as cosmetic.

Investors are increasingly seeking creative transaction structures to cash in on the heated real estate market.A strategy that uses preconstruction contracts in Section 1031 like-kind exchanges is one way that is gaining acceptance among investors, especially in areas with heavy condominium development.

Every year, Congress and the Internal Revenue Service help us justify a tax preparer's worth to clients by throwing a few new curves into the tax return preparation process. The 2005 tax return filing season is no exception.This year Congress even threw a few curves at the IRS and commercial tax software creators by passing year-end tax legislation with an impact on 2005 returns after the IRS had already done much of the work on its tax forms for the filing season. Here are some items to watch out for as you work through the 2005 return filing season.

KPMG is looking for participants for the second annual Section 404 Benchmark Survey run under the firm's 404 Institute.

Speaking at a Council on Foreign Relations forum in New York a day after the advisory panel's decision, f our former chairmen of the SEC all argued against exempting any companies from the internal controls provisions, according to reports.