Regulatory actions and programs

The Financial Accounting Standards Board and the International Accounting Standards Board said they intend to prioritize the major convergence projects ahead of them as they try to reach the goal of melding U.S. and international accounting standards, with some projects pushed back further next year.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has released updated staff guidance to help accounting firms outside the U.S. to register with the board even if their countries do not allow the PCAOB to inspect them or answer some of the questions on a PCAOB application form.

President Barack hosted a group of award-winning small business owners from around the country in the White House Rose Garden and used the occasion to prod Congress to pass the administration’s Small Business Jobs Package.

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., said he anticipates an exemption for small and midsized public companies from Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404(b) requirements for independent audits of their internal controls to remain in the final version of the financial regulatory reform bill.

In the years I have opined on these pages, I've devoted a fair amount of space to the Securities and Exchange Commission. Whether it was critiquing a regime change, calling for a bigger budget or trying to comprehend the regulator's vacillating stance with regard to adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards, the commission has served as a rather convenient editorial subject.

The Center for Audit Quality and the Council of Institutional Investors are protesting two proposed amendments to the financial regulatory reform bill that would exempt smaller public companies from compliance with Sarbanes-Oxley Section 404(b) audits of their internal controls.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board continues to encounter resistance in inspecting foreign accounting firms that audit the books of non-U.S. companies whose stock trades on U.S. exchanges.

The Internal Revenue Service has issued new guidance on the recently passed health care reform bill to clarify that small businesses receiving state health care tax credits can still qualify for the full federal health care tax credit, and they can receive the health care tax credit not only for regular health insurance but also for add-on dental and vision coverage.

The International Accounting Standards Board has published a proposed set of changes in the accounting standards for financial liabilities to address what it calls the “counter-intuitive” effects of fair value measurement.

Consider this seemingly incontrovertible Feb. 24, 2010, assertion by American Institute of CPAs chief executive Barry Melancon: "Our increasingly global economy makes it clear that the U.S. should move toward a single set of high-quality, globally accepted accounting standards for public companies."

When the history of accounting in the U.S. is written, March 10, 2010, will go down as one of the key dates. While little noticed, a Financial Accounting Standards Board announcement portends perhaps the greatest change in GAAP since FASB itself was formed. The following quote from the FASB Web site hardly hinted at what was to come:

Nearly one-third of public companies have no plans to use Extensible Business Reporting Language technology for their financial filings, despite an SEC mandate requiring XBRL use by 2011.

President Barack Obama has ordered the establishment of two interagency task forces on federal contracting opportunities for small businesses and for veterans small business development.

The Securities and Exchange Commission’s Office of Inspector General found that at least 33 SEC employees and contractors used government computers to view pornographic images in the past five years.

The Center for Audit Quality, the CFA Institute, and the Council of Institutional Investors have written to leaders of the Senate Banking Committee asking them not to exempt smaller public companies from Sarbanes-Oxley internal controls audit requirements in the financial regulatory reform legislation.

The Internal Revenue Service has begun mailing postcards to more than 4 million small businesses and tax-exempt organizations to make them aware of the benefits of the recently enacted small business health care tax credit.

President Obama’s Financial Fraud Enforcement Task Force has introduced a new Web site to educate Americans about how to protect themselves from fraud and report instances of fraud.

New York-The blue ribbon panel formed in December to address the 30-year-old debate over whether to issue a separate set of reporting standards for private companies is set to address a number of key issues that hopefully will move the protracted discussion to the next level.

SEC APPROVES PCAOB FOREIGN INSPECTION DELAY

International Accounting Standards Board Chairman Sir David Tweedie told a group of European finance officials that the IASB and the U.S. Financial Accounting Standards Board are on track to converge their standards by June 2011, after which there will be a period of stability in accounting standards.