Accounting standards

Accountants and banking industry officials hoping for looser financial reporting standards in response to the economic downturn received a reality check from the keynote speakers at the American Institute of CPAs’ National Conference on Current SEC/PCAOB Developments.

Accountants in the U.S. are increasingly starting to prepare for the transition to International Financial Reporting Standards, according to a new survey by the American Institute of CPAs.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board plans to introduce a new official accounting standards codification on July 1 that will supersede other sources, including the AICPA.

Securities and Exchange Commission Chief Accountant Conrad Hewitt intends to leave the agency in January.

XBRL US plans to soon publish an upgraded version of the Extensible Business Reporting Language interactive data tags for U.S. generally accepted accounting principles and is making the latest draft available for public review.

The American Bankers Association has written to Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson calling on regulators to make several immediate reforms to mark-to-market and fair value accounting rules before banks have to file their year-end financial statements.

Companies in the U.S. and Europe generally favor the move to International Financial Reporting Standards, but European companies are much more skeptical about the process.

The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has approved a $157.6 million budget for calendar year 2009, a $13 million increase from the $144.6 million it approved for 2008.

Companies that are the subjects of Securities and Exchange Commission enforcement actions for financial fraud are more than twice as likely to go bankrupt as those that are not, according a study by Deloitte Forensic Center.

For those who couldn’t find the proposed roadmap released by the SEC when they went to the Commission’s site last week, don’t blame yourself. You need an actual roadmap to find it.

In the last of a series of roundtable discussions of mark-to-market accounting before issuing a congressionally mandated study, a panel of accounting experts told the Securities and Exchange Commission about the challenges of valuing assets in a rapidly sinking market.

Business consulting and internal audit firm Protiviti has updated its Global Financial Crisis Bulletin with answers to the latest questions about the financial meltdown.

State and local governments could take advantage of the interactive data-tagging technology that the Securities and Exchange Commission plans to require public companies to begin using for their financial filings.

At long last, the SEC has published its proposed roadmap for the transition to International Financial Reporting Standards, but the “date certain” is as uncertain as ever.

SEC Chairman Christopher Cox acknowledged that the mortgage meltdown may have started in the United States, but he pointed the finger at other countries for helping create a global economic crisis.

In an article entitled “Address Going-Concern Issues as Early as Possible,” in Camico’s Impact Fall 2008 newsletter, the professional liability insurer offers the following advice: “Going-concern issues should be addressed as early as possible in an engagement. …. Delay makes the necessary conversations more difficult, may impair your objectivity, and usually exacerbates the problem.”

The Securities and Exchange Commission has published its long-delayed roadmap for the transition to International Financial Reporting Standards.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban with insider trading charges stemming from his sale of 600,000 shares of the search engine Mamma.com.

The Securities and Exchange Commission was somewhat ambivalent last August when it approved a "roadmap" towards accepting International Financial Reporting Standards for U.S. publicly held companies.Indeed, several months after agreeing on the framework for its ultimate mandate of IFRS accounting beginning in 2014, the regulator still hadn't published an official document outlining its decision. But that apparently isn't dampening accounting firms' commitment to gearing up for IFRS, or to alerting clients to IFRS's sweeping ramifications.

The Internal Revenue Service has not developed sufficient processes to ensure that more than 61 million tax refunds were directly deposited last tax season to the correct bank account, according to a new report from the Treasury's inspector general.The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration said that the IRS places responsibility for compliance with federal direct deposit regulations on the taxpayer, and indicated that it is the taxpayer's responsibility to ensure that their tax refunds are directly deposited only into their accounts. TIGTA and representatives from the Treasury's Financial Management Service, however, believe that the IRS is responsible for enforcing the requirement.