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(Bloomberg) — The U.S. House of Representatives moved toward giving small companies an additional year to adhere to the Sarbanes-Oxley Act’s accounting rules, which are being revised by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

House lawmakers voted 267 to 154 to delay a deadline for companies with less than $75 million in publicly available shares to start complying with the law’s audit rules. The measure was attached to a $21.4 billion spending measure that funds the White House, the SEC and other agencies.

U.S. Representative Scott Garrett, a New Jersey Republican, proposed the amendment out of concern the audit rules will impose disproportionate expenses on small companies. The vote indicates lawmakers don’t think the changes being implemented by the SEC go far enough in reducing compliance burdens.

bloomberg.com: House Votes to Give Small Companies More Time on Sarbanes-Oxley

When the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission moved last week to relax a provision of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, it signalled the end to what could be called the Great Audit War.

Ever since U.S. lawmakers passed the corporate reforms in 2002, legal and financial executives have been waging a behind-the-scenes war with external auditors over the staggering costs and management burden stemming from what surely has been the largest corporate list-making exercise in history.

The culprit is a four paragraph passage in the now infamous Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley which requires thousands of U.S. and about 200 Canadian companies listed on American stock exchanges to “review and assess” the controls they have in place to detect financial reporting errors or fraud. The kicker is a requirement that outside auditors test and deliver an annual opinion about the effectiveness of the corporate safeguards.

With no guidance from the SEC about how to arrive at the annual opinion, the accounting police went, well, berserk demanding exhaustive tests and reports so auditors wouldn’t be liable if financial shenanigans were exposed.

globeinvestor: Bid adieu to the Great Audit War

Lawmakers and regulators in Washington, D.C., yesterday heard an earful from small-business owners, including some from Massachusetts, who claimed the Sarbanes-Oxley Act is burdening firms and stifling growth.

Complaints ranged from the costs associated with the act’s accounting regulations to firms balking at going public if it means spending so much money complying with provisions.

“From my perspective as an entrepreneur, the atmosphere for raising capital in the U.S. has taken a turn for the worse,” said Joseph Piche, chief executive of Franklin-based Eikos Inc., a privately held nanotechnology firm. Piche, whose firm has explored going public, and others testified at a hearing of the U.S. Senate’s Small Business and Entrepreneurship Committee, headed by Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.).

Thomas Venables, chief executive of Benjamin Franklin Bancorp in Franklin, said his bank achieved compliance last year with a key provision of the act, Section 404, which requires extensive accounting procedures.

Boston Herald: Small biz hits Sarbanes-Oxley law