Tammy Whitehouse

Auditors have a new standard in place that requires them to say more precisely whether an adjustment of a previously issued financial statement results from a mistake or a change in accounting policy. The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board met last week to approve Auditing Standard No. 6, Evaluating Consistency of Financial Statements, along with […]

The world’s six largest auditing firms have issued two reports advising capital markets on how to improve financial reporting, reduce the risk of fraud, and shift accounting practices away from a detailed, bright-line system toward a more principles-based approach. The heads of the Big 4 firms—Deloitte & Touche, Ernst & Young, KPMG, and PricewaterhouseCoopers—as well […]

Accounting purists shiver at the notion that a new accounting rule would drive new behavior … but they acknowledge it often does. Now new rules for mergers and acquisitions are likely to have some far-reaching consequences for what such deals cost and how they get done. Gary “I don’t ever really think accounting is going […]

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has published two new snippets of guidance on proper use of the “shortcut method” to account for hedging instruments, the latest chapter in FASB’s ongoing quest to clarify complexities in derivative accounting. The guidance is Implementation Issue No. E23, which focuses on Paragraph 68 of Financial Accounting Standard No. 133, […]

The nation’s chief accountant has given his temporary blessing to an accounting maneuver that lets banks keep workouts of troubled loans off the balance sheet, even as he urges new rules to address the issue in future reporting periods. The mortgage industry, meanwhile, is asking those same standard setters for yet another accounting maneuver that […]

They might face uncertainty, awkward disclosure, and mountains of data scattered among many systems, but companies are trudging forward to implement the first modern accounting standard that rests on principles rather than rules: fair value measurement. Financial Accounting Standard No. 157, Fair Value Measurement, took effect for calendar-year companies with the start of the 2008 […]

The U.S. Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service have issued guidance on implementing a May 2007 law that holds tax preparers to a higher standard of certainty for the tax positions they assert in tax filings. The guidance also asks preparers to offer input on how the IRS and Treasury Department can overhaul the […]

The body that oversees the Financial Accounting Standards Board has floated the idea of cutting FASB from seven board members to five, and simplifying vote procedures to make adoption of new accounting rules a speedier process. The board of trustees of the Financial Accounting Foundation, which sets funding for and approves appointments to both FASB […]

It’s crunch time for calendar-year corporate tax departments to finish their disclosures about uncertain tax positions and win auditor approval of them—and for many companies, the experience is the proverbial tightrope walk. To comply with Financial Interpretation No. 48, Accounting for Uncertainty in Income Taxes, public companies have already faced the disclosures required in quarterly […]