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A rising chorus of business groups is calling for dramatic accounting reforms

Corporations are suffering from a severe case of restatement fatigue. Last year 10% of public companies, some 1,244, had to correct their financials, up from less than 1% a decade ago. “Did all of these [companies] get it wrong because they were incompetent, lazy, or engaging in fraud?” says Robert C. Pozen, chairman of MFS Investment Management, a public mutual fund firm. “I don’t think [so].”

Of course, management is blaming the onerous rules of the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SarbOx), which beefed up disclosure. But now companies also are blasting regulators. They contend officials at the Securities & Exchange Commission and others are capriciously reinterpreting rules or using ambiguous or inappropriate tests for problems–all of which has forced a flood of unnecessary and costly restatements. As a result, the movement to lighten the SarbOx burden has evolved into a broader push for dramatic accounting reforms.

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