Small companies could get yet another extension for compliance deadlines with Sarbanes-Oxley’s internal control provisions if regulators can’t move quickly enough with their latest proposals to ease compliance burdens, according to Securities and Exchange Commission Chief Accountant Conrad Hewitt.
Hewitt, speaking in New York last week at the Foundation of Accounting Education’s annual conference, stressed the need for a “cost-benefit balance under SOX” for smaller public companies, which currently must start complying with Section 404’s internal control provisions at the end of this year. If the reforms proposed in December by the SEC and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board don’t achieve that balance, he said, “we’ll defer [the reporting requirements for smaller companies] even more until we can help.”
