|
CPA Execs Optimistic About
Business Growth; Increased Spending on the Horizon
Reversing a trend of declining optimism over the past three years, CPAs
serving as chief executive officers, chief financial officers and in other
executive financial positions have a favorable view of the economy,
according to the first quarter
2007 Business and Industry Economic Outlook Survey. The study, conducted
by the AICPA, shows that 68 percent of these executives expect their
businesses to expand over the next 12 months.
 Return to Top
SEC Elevates District
Offices to Regional Level
The Securities and Exchange Commission announced last week that each of
its six district offices nationwide will become a
regional office reporting directly to the Commission's Washington, D.C.,
headquarters starting today, April 2, 2007. The district offices are in
Atlanta, Boston, Fort Worth, Philadelphia, Salt Lake City and San Francisco.
The Commission's existing regional offices are in Chicago, Denver, Los
Angeles, Miami and New York City. The change is designed to impart more
authority to the new regional offices, and to help eliminate the potential
for redundancy and overlap in SEC inspection and enforcement procedures.
Return to Top
Board Considers
Proposing New Auditing Standard and Amendments to the Interim Standards
The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board
(PCAOB) will hold an open meeting at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow, Tuesday, April 3,
in the Board’s Washington, D.C. office. The Board will consider proposing an
auditing standard, Evaluating Consistency of Financial Statements,
and related amendments to the Board’s interim standards regarding the
auditor’s responsibilities to evaluate and report on matters relating to the
consistency of the financial statements. In addition, the Board will
consider proposing amendments to the Board’s interim auditing standards.
These amendments
would remove the hierarchy of generally accepted accounting principles from
the auditing standards in light of the proposal by the Financial Accounting
Standards Board to place the hierarchy in the accounting standards. The
meeting is open to the public and will be webcast. Read more on the
PCAOB web site.
Return to Top
Phone Tax Refund Applies
to Cell Phones
Many cell phone users appear to be overlooking
the
telephone tax refund in the mistaken belief that this one-time refund
only applies to landline customers. According to the IRS, most cell phone
users qualify for the federal telephone excise tax refund. In most cases,
the refund is also available to landline, fax and Internet phone customers
as well. The method of phone signal transmission does not affect the refund.
The telephone-tax refund can add $30 to $60 — or even more — onto a
taxpayer’s refund.
Return to Top
IRS Issues Regulations on
Transactions Designed to Artificially Generate Foreign Tax Credits
The IRS and Treasury Department released
proposed regulations that would disallow foreign tax credits for foreign
taxes purportedly paid in connection with certain artificially engineered,
highly structured transactions. Foreign tax credits are designed to relieve
U.S. taxpayers from double taxation of their foreign source income.
Transactions addressed by the regulations, in contrast, are structured so
that a U.S. taxpayer voluntarily subjects himself/herself to foreign tax where an
ordinary business transaction generally would result in little or no foreign
tax paid by the U.S. taxpayer. Foreign tax credit abuse is among the IRS’s
top compliance concerns for large corporate taxpayers.
Return to Top
The Basics of VOIP
Voice over IP (VoIP) involves an array of phone services, including those already offered through traditional phone providers. However, unlike traditional phone systems that transmit a caller's voice using circuit switching--involving end-to-end
connections across the phone network--VoIP uses packet switching.
To read this article in its entirety and
learn much more about developments in technology, access
Technology and
Productivity Weekly, the MACPA's electronic technology newsletter for
industry professionals, sponsored by Information, Inc.
Return to Top
|
Return
to Top