Tammy Whitehouse

A n influential voice among institutional investors has asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to delay its approval of a market-based approach to valuing employee stock options, so the proposed security can be studied and any concerns about its validity be shared. In a Feb. 5 letter to SEC Chief Accountant Conrad Hewitt, the Council […]

So your auditor has been inspected. The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has issued a report about the firm’s performance. The report is sitting on your desk. Now comes the tricky question: What the heck do you do with it? Sizing up an auditor’s performance based on the PCAOB report is not quite easy, and […]

In its Jan. 11 inaugural meeting as an advisory group to the Financial Accounting Standards Board, the Investors Technical Advisory Committee has said new accounting rules should require retrospective application and that private companies with public debt should be required to meet the same effective dates as public companies. ITAC floated the ideas as a […]

Audit regulators have given a wake-up call to auditing firms that inspectors will be looking for more effort in ferreting out fraud risks. The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board issued a report last week that says audit-engagement teams typically don’t do enough investigating when they discover possible evidence of fraud, nor do they adequately document […]

The Financial Accounting Standards Board will stand firm on its plans to enforce the effective date of new tax-related reporting rules, although it has promised more guidance on the tricky subject—and stressed that the Board is not looking for exhaustive documentation of the obvious. FASB met last week to answer the 11th hour request for […]

If the proposed changes to Auditing Standard No. 2 take hold, companies and auditors can take those troublesome catch phrases like “more than remote” and “more than inconsequential” and kiss them goodbye. Whether anyone will want to embrace the next generation of terminology, however, is still unclear. Goelzer Under the reforms proposed last month by […]

Now that valuation is playing a more prominent role in financial reporting, accounting rulemakers are wondering if companies need more guidance—or even a new standards-setting body—to steer the valuation process. The Financial Accounting Standards Board has issued an invitation to comment on whether and how the market should get new guidance on conducting business valuations. […]

The Securities and Exchange Commission is taking a keen interest in internal control effectiveness letters, improper use of non-GAAP measures, holes in MD&A, and the ways in which revenue is allocated from complex contracts. Those are among 10 hot-button issues that prompted SEC remarks on corporate periodic filings, according to a recent analysis of SEC […]

IMPORTANT UPDATE FASB has unanimously voted not to delay the effective date of FIN 48, a controversial accounting rule that requires companies to assess all uncertain tax positions. The Board will issue new guidance soon to help companies understand their disclosure requirements under the new rule. Compliance Week will cover this issue extensively in its […]