Plans by the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board to overhaul the organization’s standards for internal control audits don’t go far enough to correct the problems of the PCAOB’s original ground rules - or they go too far in watering down the original Sarbanes-Oxley Act protections for investors by yielding to powerful business groups.

Or they muddy the waters for accountants who are already swimming upstream to interpret and implement Auditing Standard No. 2, which governs audits of internal controls.

Those are some of the comments and opinions that PCAOB officials are currently sifting through after being swamped with comments from CPA firms, business executives, investor advocates and others expressing a wide range of criticisms about their previously announced plan to pare down the amount of testing necessary for SOX 404.

[1] WebCPA: Opinions pour in on SOX 404 proposal