SOX Center

IRS agents are drilling dry holes during corporate audits, the Japanese version of Sarbox, a new spin on insider trading, issuing debt without all the paperwork, and how to keep workers safe, but also help them die.

When Mark Everson took office in 2003 as commissioner of the Internal Revenue Service, he promised that collecting underpaid corporate taxes would be a top priority, and backed it up by increasing the number of large corporate audits. Results were quickly realized, with additional recommended taxes doubling in fiscal 2005 compared with the previous year (see “Crackdown,” January 2006). But now Syracuse University’s Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse (TRAC) suggests the effort may have run out of steam.

CFO.com: Not So Taxing?

The PCAOB has killed its reviled internal-control standard. Now it’s up to the SEC to pronounce it officially dead.

Perhaps the most hated rule to come out of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act is dead. Well, almost. On Thursday, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board voted unanimously to replace its controversial internal-control auditing standard with Auditing Standard No. 5. Critics of the original standard shouldn’t celebrate just yet, however. AS5 requires the Securities and Exchange’s approval, which will likely not happen for at least another month.

The PCAOB’s Auditing Standard No. 2 is the rule largely blamed for creating excessively high audit fees for companies complying with the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Indeed, since auditors began using AS2, companies have complained that common interpretations of the standard wrought burdensome audits by promoting work for work’s sake and encouraging a rigid checklist approach.

CFO.com: Ding-Dong, AS2 Is Dead