Accounting & Auditing

The intent of the Financial Accounting Standards Board was clear: to clarify the rules and create more consistency in how companies account for asset retirement obligations. The outcome, however, could not be murkier. With Financial Interpretation No. 47, FASB wanted to delineate how companies should account for any future legal obligations they might face to […]

Three accounting groups—two in the United States and one abroad—plan to study what the market believes an auditor’s report should say, as a preliminary step in potentially revising how the report should be written. The American Institute of Certified Public Accountants, the American Accounting Association, and the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board want to […]

The U.S. Treasury Department is considering new rules that would generally require companies to pay more when buying services from a related entity. The tax code already requires that transactions among entities held under common ownership be priced at “arm’s length,” says William Bonano, a partner with Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman. The regulations apply in […]

Companies intending to stick with their defined-benefit retirement plans now face increased cost and increased volatility, following the passage of a comprehensive pension reform measure in Congress that compels companies to ensure that pension plans are more fully funded. For better or worse, however, business advocates say the overall impact of the new pension law […]

Perhaps portending the amount of paperwork companies will face to comply with its new rules, the Securities and Exchange Commission issued its final text on the disclosure of executive and director pay last week—all 436 pages of it. Along with the text, the SEC called for comment a revised proposal to require that companies disclose […]

Improper backdating of stock options might be in the spotlight these days, but don’t forget—at the urging of the Securities and Exchange Commission, financiers are still slaving away to create better ways to value the pesky things, too. Two new ideas of how to do so have emerged recently. Both come from financial institutions, eager […]

Just as companies were expecting some relief from the aggressive audits of Sarbanes-Oxley, regulators have dispatched auditors to dig deeper into corporate stock option grants, looking for evidence of whether grants were doctored to create windfalls for executive compensation. The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board issued an audit alert giving auditors a roadmap for how […]

International accounting rulemakers have decided to give companies a break from new rules for a few years, with no major new rules becoming effective until 2009. So says the International Accounting Standards Board, which announced the moratorium last week. Sensitive to complaints that companies and nations alike are struggling to adopt International Financial Reporting Standards, […]

Transparency may be a concept most often discussed in the context of financial reporting, but a recent decision by accounting rulemakers will force companies to think more about transparency as they compile their tax returns. Bortman It’s a foreign notion to tax specialists. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard a tax person, except for a […]

A logjam of opaque financial reporting structures has long dammed up economic growth among the European Union’s vast realm of small businesses, family-owned or otherwise. Now, new legislation intends to overhaul reporting rules, drive down the cost of capital, and galvanize the small- and medium-sized business sector there. As in the United States, SMBs are […]