Professional development

New guidance from Securities and Exchange Commission regulators sets limits on ways to determine the cost of stock options, though the new SEC chairman said that the report was "tentative."

Although Congress has authorized tens of billions of dollars in tax breaks to help American families cope with rising college costs, millions of taxpayers are failing to cash in on this government assistance.

The Internal Revenue Service said victims of Hurricane Katrina will have until Jan. 3, 2006 to file any returns, pay any taxes, or make any deposits due -- extending an earlier announced reprieve.

The American Institute of CPAs and the Internal Revenue Service launched a partnership aimed at providing assistance to taxpayers at local disaster recovery centers established by the Federal Emergency Management Agency.

The Treasury Department and the Internal Revenue Service said that they would waive the tax-credit regulations that prohibit owners of low-income housing providing housing to victims of Hurricane Katrina who don't qualify as "low income."

U.S. TO REISSUE 30-YEAR BOND IN Q1 2006: The Bush administration said that it would resurrect the 30-year Treasury bond, a move that it said would help to finance the national debt and, at that same time, appeal to conservative investors looking for long-term options.

When CPAs add financial services to their practices, the overwhelming method of entry is to affiliate with a broker/dealer and receive commissions. For many, there is a next stage: transitioning to a model of full financial advisory with compensation from fees based on assets under management. Careful management of the rebranding can ease clients into the new way of doing business.

Broker/dealers who are not registered as investment advisors must now give brokerage customers a disclosure stating that their interests may not always be the same as their customers.

The American Institute of CPAs has won a 2005 Clarion Award from the Association for Women in Communications for its national "360 Degrees of Financial Literacy" program.

A survey by Fidelity Investments recently found that one-third of working adults are delaying their retirement plans due to financial reasons.

Earnings for financial planners have risen 27 percent from their 2004 levels according to a survey conducted by the College for Financial Planning in conjunction with the Financial Planning Association.

British consulting group Lane Clark & Peacock said that the pension deficits for Britain's top 100 companies by market value totaled more than $66 billion as of July, and could affect the way businesses using the new International Financial Reporting Standards are run.

The American Institute of CPAs has announced the winners of the 2004 Elijah Watt Sells Awards, presented annually to the candidates earning the highest cumulative scores on the four sections of the Uniform CPA Examination. The candidates must have completed testing during the previous calendar year and passed each exam section on their first attempt.

KPMG's 404 Institute, an open forum for accounting professionals, has a two-part Webcast series in their archives for registered users on SOX compliance technology.

Advisors who are planning for the rest of 2005 face changes that could derail even the best-made investor plans. Calm waters in both equity and fixed-income markets could face hurricane gales in the face of terrorist attacks, a continued low-return environment and implosions in overvalued sectors. As future projections call for more of the same, advisors stay wary.

What criteria determines a good or bad credit risk?

A survivor annuity, either in the form of a qualified joint and survivor annuity, or QJSA, if the participant is alive on the starting date, or a qualified pre-retirement survivor annuity, or QPSA, if the participant dies before the starting date, must be provided to married plan participants and their spouses with respect to certain qualified plans.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board issued a revised exposure draft, titled, "Accounting for Transfers of Financial Assets."

SmartPros Ltd., a provider of accredited professional education and corporate training, recently reported its financial results for the second quarter and first half of the year.

The Governmental Accounting Standard Board recently published a guide to its statements 43 and 45, both which address post-employment benefits besides pensions.