Accounting standards

The American Institute of CPAs outlined plans to simplify the plethora of auditing standards and eliminate any that had no clear objective.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has filed civil fraud charges against eight former executives of AOL Time Warner, blaming them for causing the company to overstate advertising revenue by more than $1 billion via round-trip accounting transactions.

With accounting standards moving toward convergence around the world, some accounting firms are beginning to worry that the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards could lead to litigation.

The American Institute of CPAs passed a resolution at its Spring Council meeting voting to recognize the International Accounting Standards Board in London as the international accounting and financial reporting standards-setter.

The Securities and Exchange Commission has charged the former CEO and CFO of Broadcom with stock options backdating, along with the chip maker’s chairman and general counsel.

Ernst & Young is developing a curriculum to help accounting students learn about International Financial Reporting Standards.

A White House memo directing agencies to finalize their rules before the fall election could have an impact on plans for the use of Extensible Business Reporting Language and International Financial Reporting Standards in filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The Senate Finance Committee has proposed a new tax bill that seeks to prevent the Alternative Minimum Tax from spreading to more taxpayers next tax season.The bill, sponsored by committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., and ranking member Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa, increases the AMT exemption amount to $46,200 for individuals and $69,950 for joint filers. It allows the use of personal credits to keep taxpayers who don’t currently pay the AMT from being snared by the tax.

As the Governmental Accounting Standards Board began grappling with concepts in reporting governmental service efforts and accomplishments, or SEA, it knew traditional financial statements didn’t provide a complete picture of government performance.After all, not everything that a government does can be measured in dollars and cents, so should GASB write standards for things that are not measured monetarily?

Section 7216, a part of the Internal Revenue Code since 1971, imposes criminal penalties on tax return preparers who knowingly or recklessly make unauthorized disclosures or uses of information furnished in connection with the preparation of an income tax return.A violation of the section is not to be taken lightly — it comes with a penalty of up to a year’s imprisonment or a fine of not more than $1,000, or both.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has issued an invitation to comment on how it might proceed toward simplifying the measurement of complex financial instruments.The invitation comes amid a global controversy over whether current reporting on some financial instruments at fair value may be causing volatility in securities and credit markets. The issue at FASB, however, is over the perplexing varieties of measurement.

Deloitte has formed an International Financial Reporting Standards University Consortium to help bring IFRS into more college classrooms.

The Securities and Exchange Commission voted at an open meeting to propose that companies begin filing financial statements in an interactive tagged format as early as next year.

Nearly 75 percent of CFOs and senior comptrollers have no experience using International Financial Reporting Standards, while 55 percent are unfamiliar with the Extensible Business Reporting Language, according to a new survey by Grant Thornton.

With so many accounting standards, it can be hard to keep up with them all.

With convergence to a single set of global accounting rules an inevitability as opposed to a possibility, it’s up to standards setters and regulators to put forth guidelines that are not only the best that can be written, but also ones that shed unnecessary complexity.

The American Institute of CPAs has appointed Jay Hanson as chairman-elect of its Accounting Standards Executive Committee.

The Securities and Exchange Commission is expected to announced a proposed rule Wednesday mandating the filing of SEC reports in Extensible Business Reporting Language format.

The Treasury Department's Advisory Committee on the Auditing Profession on May 5 issued a draft of its final report. It is broken down into a number of sections, each with detailed recommendations with regard to auditing and the auditing profession.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has issued FASB Statement No. 162, "The Hierarchy of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles," intended as a replacement for the American Institute of CPAs' GAAP hierarchy.