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Accounting And Auditing

Below is some of the most recent Compliance Week coverage on issues related to accounting and auditing. Coverage focuses on developments emanating from FASB and the PCAOB—on issues as diverse as FIN 48, “fair value,” auditor independence and more—but extends to broader financial reporting issues as well. The list below shows the most recent articles first.

  Title & Description Date Type of Article
1. A Look at FASB’s Latest Foray Into Contingencies
Earlier this July, the Financial Accounting Standards Board published an exposure draft for comment, Contingencies (Topic 450): Disclosures of Certain Loss Contingencies. (Most of us know this as Financial Accounting Standard No. 5.) This is the board’s second attempt at addressing contingencies; its previous attempt in 2008 received 241 comment letters—mostly unsupportive.
 By Colleen Cunningham
08/31/10 Columns & Editorials
2. Small Cos. Escape SOX 404, Not Audit Scrutiny
The smallest of public companies may have won their long-fought battle to escape an audit of internal controls—but that doesn’t mean they are free from scrutiny.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
08/31/10 Compliance Week Coverage
3. Exclusive Report: Audit Fees Continue to Plummet
Corporate America continues to win its long-standing battle in the fight to reduce audit fees.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
08/24/10 Compliance Week Coverage
4. PCAOB Standards Push New Approach on Audits
Companies may eventually face new procedures and documentation in their external audits—all, of course, potentially driving up costs—as auditors begin digesting an onslaught of new requirements for assessing and responding to risk.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
08/17/10 Compliance Week Coverage
5. Reducing Your Risk of Unclaimed Property Audits
Strapped for cash, most state governments are turning to unconventional means to increase revenue—and they are finding unclaimed property audits to be an easy target.
 By Jaclyn Jaeger
08/17/10 Compliance Week Coverage
6. Goldman Sheds Some Light on Valuing Illiquid Assets
Many accounting and financial reporting executives still wonder how they should report the fair market value of assets that are trapped in frozen or otherwise illiquid markets. Now investment banking giant Goldman Sachs has given a glimpse into how it has approached the problem.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
08/10/10 Compliance Week Coverage
7. Helping Yourself: Send FASB Useful Comment Letters
My first column this year discussed a few hopes for 2010. One of them happened in February, when the Securities and Exchange Commission clarified its thinking about International Financial Reporting Standards. I’m happy to report that another happened in June, as the Financial Accounting Standards Board issued several exposure drafts as part of its big push to improve and converge U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles and IFRS, and announced a slower timetable for completion of the 15 or so projects on its agenda.
 By Scott Taub
07/27/10 Columns & Editorials
8. Audit Committee Checklist: Financial Reporting
The risks around financial reporting have never been more real for audit committees. Increasing pressure from regulators and economic events, combined with massive changes in accounting rules looming on the horizon, should be worrying audit committees like never before.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
07/27/10 Compliance Week Coverage
9. The Need for Standards in Accounting Control Frameworks
When the Securities and Exchange Commission first published guidance on how to comply with the infamous Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, which requires companies to assess and disclose the strength of their internal control over financial reporting, the agency pointed to the Committee of Sponsoring Organizations’ 1992-era Internal Control-Integrated Framework as an example of a “suitable” control assessment framework. At the time, the agency did also state that other control frameworks met its suitability criteria, but the strong endorsement of the SEC (and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board) has resulted in the now-dated COSO framework becoming, for all intents and purposes, the only official control criteria public companies use to assess the effectiveness of their accounting controls.
 By Tim Leech, Guest Columnist
07/20/10 Columns & Editorials
10. Selling Receivables Suddenly Not Such an Easy Move
Selling off your old accounts receivable to banks or collections agencies in exchange for cash has long been a nifty way for public companies to strengthen the balance sheet. New accounting rules for asset transfers, however, are about to make that maneuver much harder to do.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
07/20/10 Compliance Week Coverage
11. New Revenue Standard Could Bring Complex Changes
Businesses in the professional services and manufacturing sectors could see dramatic changes to their accounting policies if a new standard for recognizing revenue proceeds as proposed.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
07/13/10 Compliance Week Coverage
12. Uncertainty in Derivatives Legislation Looms Large
As financial institutions brace for legislative overhaul of their derivatives business, companies that enter into derivative contracts as part of a hedging strategy are wondering what the impending new regime will mean for them, too.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
07/07/10 Compliance Week Coverage
13. PCAOB Member Gradison Speculates on Board’s Future
Bill Gradison, a member of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board since its creation in 2003 under the landmark Sarbanes-Oxley Act, is as eager as everybody else to hear whether the U.S. Supreme Court believes he should have a job.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
06/29/10 Compliance Week Coverage
14. Reorganizing? Take Advantage of Fresh Start Accounting
As a result of the persistent poor economy, more companies are filing for reorganization under Chapter 11 of the U.S. Bankruptcy Code. So-called “fresh start” accounting is available for many of them. New accounting pronouncements, however—principally new rules for business combinations and fair-value measurements—have made the application of fresh-start accounting even more complicated than ever.
 By Colleen Cunningham
06/29/10 Columns & Editorials
15. Textron Ruling Leaves Tax Compliance Dazed, Confused
Auditors and tax executives are reconsidering how best to protect their work analyzing a company’s tax positions following the Supreme Court’s recent refusal to hear a crucial lawsuit on that point.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
06/22/10 Compliance Week Coverage
16. Avoid a Tax Probe by Knowing IRS Agenda
Any company wanting to avoid a tax examination by the Internal Revenue Service may find it helpful to know what’s on the agency’s agenda these days. Speaking at a June 16 Webcast hosted by PricewaterhouseCoopers, IRS Service Team Director Frank Rodjius offered some inside perspective.
 By Jaclyn Jaeger
06/22/10 Compliance Week Coverage
17. Going-Concern Warnings Fall, Companies Still Wary
Despite some guarded optimism about the economy in general, public companies are still caught in a pressure cooker over the question of whether they can continue as a going concern.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
06/15/10 Compliance Week Coverage
18. Bracing for Tidal Wave of Accounting Changes
Financial reporting executives, prepare yourselves: Rough seas lie ahead for corporate accounting.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
06/02/10 Compliance Week Coverage
19. Getting to IFRS With Wisdom, Not Expediency
In my first column this year, I wrote that I hoped the Securities and Exchange Commission would soon give us some clarity on its thinking in regard to moving U.S. reporting companies to International Financial Reporting Standards to calm some of the anxiety regarding that potential move. My wish was fulfilled in February when the SEC issued its “Commission Statement in Support of Convergence and Global Accounting Standards.”
 By Scott Taub
05/25/10 Columns & Editorials
20. Study Says Non-Audit Fees on the Decline
Corporate America’s long war to reduce audit fees—which it has been winning in recent years—seems to have reaped benefits for non-audit fees as well, according to a comprehensive new study.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
05/25/10 Compliance Week Coverage
21. The Tax Surprises in Healthcare Reform
Tax executives are getting up to speed on the tax implications of healthcare reform, including a subtle but significant new provision that has little to do with healthcare directly.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
05/18/10 Compliance Week Coverage
22. Financial Reporting Pitfalls Lurking in Healthcare Reform
As human resources departments across the country digest the implications of the landmark healthcare reform laws passed by Congress in March, accounting departments, too, are gearing up to assure that corporate financial statements accurately reflect the massive changes hurtling toward Corporate America.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
05/11/10 Compliance Week Coverage
23. M&A Deals Uncertain in Face of Revised Merger Guidelines
Federal trade regulators are finally getting around to their long-promised review of the anti-trust regulations they use when evaluating the competitive effects of so-called “horizontal mergers” between two business rivals.
 By Melissa Klein Aguilar
05/11/10 Compliance Week Coverage
24. HIRE Act’s Enforcement Loophole Stirs Worry
As tax experts dig deeper into the fine print in the newly passed HIRE Act, they’re finding an awfully big club meant to assure compliance with foreign tax reporting obligations.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
05/04/10 Compliance Week Coverage
25. IRS Brass Explains Reporting of Uncertain Tax Positions
The Internal Revenue Service has begun a charm offensive to help defuse tensions about its new plans to require corporations to disclose uncertain tax positions as part of their tax returns.
 By Jaclyn Jaeger
05/04/10 Compliance Week Coverage
26. Weighing the Worth of an External Audit
So much has been written lately about accounting scandals, audit failures, and the financial crisis. Reforms have been passed, yet accounting problems persist. This prompted me to ask: What’s the value of an external audit at all these days?
 By Colleen Cunningham
04/27/10 Columns & Editorials
27. FASB Convergence Project Looms; Prepare to Panic
Executives in charge of financial reporting should prepare themselves: Accounting rulemakers are about to give their world one of the most profound transformations it has seen in decaded.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
04/27/10 Compliance Week Coverage
28. FASB Tries Again on Disclosure of Contingencies
Accounting rulemakers are poised to propose a new method for how companies disclose the possible cost of lawsuits—but rest easy, companies will have ample time to express their thoughts on the always controversial subject.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
04/27/10 Compliance Week Coverage
29. New Consolidation Rules Flummox Financial Reporting
New accounting rules for consolidating business interests took effect at the start of 2010—but companies are still laboring to understand just what they need to add to their financial statements and how to do so.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
04/20/10 Compliance Week Coverage
30. SEC ‘Repo Probe’ May Hinge on Weak GAAP
Companies that transfer assets on or off the balance sheet using repurchase agreements should take a close look at their accounting practices in light of a growing probe into how Lehman Brothers used “repo agreements”—with disastrous results.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
04/06/10 Compliance Week Coverage
31. Revenue Recognition When Revising Old Contracts
Companies renegotiating long-term contracts with customers would be wise to check with their auditors about how to recognize revenue under the old agreement. They may be surprised by what they hear.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
03/30/10 Compliance Week Coverage
32. Evolving Answers on Good Accounting Policy
One of my partners at Financial Reporting Advisors is fond of saying about accounting, “The questions never change.” He’s been watching accounting policy for a lot longer than I have, but even in my relatively brief time, I’ve seen enough to know he’s right.
 By Scott Taub
03/30/10 Columns & Editorials
33. Lehman Mess: Bad Intent, or Just Bad GAAP?
Lehman Brothers’ collapse into bankruptcy—finally exposed for all to see in a 2,200-page report released earlier this month—is quickly becoming the textbook tale of how mysterious and opaque the U.S. financial system and its accounting have become.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
03/23/10 Compliance Week Coverage
34. Financial Restatements Drop Again in 2009; Will It Last?
The financial-reporting community has good news to celebrate this spring, with restatements falling 27 percent in 2009 to numbers not seen since before passage of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act in 2002.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
03/16/10 Compliance Week Coverage
35. Questions Remain on Testing Goodwill Impairment
As companies begin filing first-quarter financial statements, the task is being done with a bit of guesswork about how the Securities and Exchange Commission will react to their treatments of goodwill.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
03/09/10 Compliance Week Coverage
36. Internal Audit’s Role in Preventing FCPA Violations
It seems like old news, but no matter how often Corporate America says it knows what to do, we just keep hearing about high-profile cases of violations of the U.S. Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.
 By José Tabuena
03/02/10 Columns & Editorials
37. IRS Preps Push to Disclose Uncertain Tax Positions
The Internal Revenue Service is gearing up a new campaign to have companies disclose the uncertainty they have about positions they’re claiming on the corporate tax return.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
03/02/10 Compliance Week Coverage
38. New Glimpse Into M&A Accounting Reassures
After some notable angst over whether new accounting rules for mergers and acquisitions might muck up M&A activity, early data suggests public companies aren’t tying themselves into knots seeking workaround solutions.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
02/17/10 Compliance Week Coverage
39. Koss Fraud Spotlights Small Filers’ Internal Control Issues
As Congress debates whether to exempt non-accelerated filers permanently from internal control audits—and that debate may take much longer than many expect—lawmakers might want to ponder the breathtaking fraud at Koss Corp. and its implications for external auditors’ role in preventing and detecting management deception.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
02/02/10 Compliance Week Coverage
40. SEC Warns on New Interpretations of Revenue Rules
Rigid accounting rules for revenue recognition may be giving way to more use of judgment, but the Securities and Exchange Commission is warning companies not to rush to judgment too quickly.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
01/26/10 Compliance Week Coverage
41. Internal Auditors Face New Challenges in 2010
As corporations try to find their way out of the economic crisis and back into healthy growth, boards may be leaning more on internal audit departments to help them find the way.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
01/20/10 Compliance Week Coverage
42. SEC Cracks Down on Gussied Up M&A Values
The staff of the Securities and Exchange Commission recently took a subtle but significant swipe at an accounting practice now steadily falling out of vogue: structuring business mergers and other transactions so they look pretty on financial statements.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
01/12/10 Compliance Week Coverage
43. PCAOB Looks to Improve, Expand Auditing Rules
Regulation of the auditing world is shifting gears, moving beyond the early, intense focus on internal controls to find new ways to improve auditing more broadly. Yet a pall of uncertainty remains over where that oversight of the profession should go next.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
01/05/10 Compliance Week Coverage
44. Conflict Exists Over How to Calculate Cash Flow
Every year I attend Financial Executives International’s annual Current Financial Reporting conference. The 2009 conference, held in November, was its usual excellent event, addressing everything from new accounting rules for mergers to new guidance on fair value to the future of financial statement presentation.
 By Colleen Cunningham
12/22/09 Columns & Editorials
45. SEC Curious About Drop in Material Weaknesses
Staff at the Securities and Exchange Commission are beginning to wonder whether an impressive drop in the number of disclosed material weaknesses is really due to better internal control environments—amid the most horrendous economic climate in 80 years—or is a case of companies and auditors failing to identify where weaknesses truly are.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
12/22/09 Compliance Week Coverage
46. Battle Continues Over PCAOB and SOX Future
The future of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board—and, by extension, the future of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act—may be in jeopardy, following a U.S. Supreme Court hearing last week where several justices criticized the accounting overseer as having too much independence.
 By Jaclyn Jaeger
12/15/09 Compliance Week Coverage
47. Regulators Advise on New Off-Balance-Sheet Rules
New accounting standards are about to take effect that will unmask assets and liabilities that companies have been hiding away off the balance sheet, and regulators are offering tips on how to assure compliance with the spirit of the rules.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
12/15/09 Compliance Week Coverage
48. Podcast: AICPA Update
Compliance Week editor Matt Kelly does a quick recap of the 2009 AICPA annual conference with Chris Wright, managing director at Protiviti.
 		12/11/09 Compliance Week Coverage
49. Tax Agencies Start Circling on Transfer Pricing
Corporate transfer pricing—that is, the price a company records for subsidiaries doing business with each other—has become a target for tax authorities around the world as they turn over every rock in search of revenue.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
12/08/09 Compliance Week Coverage
50. Your Checklist of Year-End Close Headaches
The economic problems that dogged businesses all year long will hang like a dark cloud over the 2009 year-end close, giving companies good cause for plenty of planning this year to avoid unpleasant audit surprises.
 By Tammy Whitehouse
12/01/09 Compliance Week Coverage

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