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Financial Reporting
Audit Committee Alert 07-01 - FASB Interpretation No. 48, Accounting for Uncertainty in Income Taxes
Audit Committee Alert provides audit committees with a high-level view of key developments affecting accounting and financial reporting—and, specifically, how they may impact the audit committee’s work.
Accounting
Judgments, Estimates, and Restatements: Implications for Audit Committee
Oversight (Audit Committee Roundtable Highlights - Fall 2005)
This 16-page publication provides an overview of the emerging
trends and leading practices regarding the audit committee’s
oversight of management’s accounting judgments and estimates,
as discussed by audit committee members and C-level executives during
ACI’s Fall 2005 roundtable series.
Tax Risk and Responsibility
A white paper from KPMG LLP that was released in June 2003 discusses
Tax Assessment Risk Review. The publication, Tax Risk and Responsibility
(TRAR), highlights tax risk -- an area of financial reporting risk
that affects almost every line on an organization’s income
statement and balance sheet -- and includes particular focus on
identifying and managing risk in the post-Sarbanes-Oxley business
environment.
SEC Report: Review of the Periodic
Reports of the Fortune 500 Companies (updated February 27, 2003)
This report, issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission’s
(SEC) Division of Corporation Finance, highlights the significant
accounting and disclosure areas most commonly commented on by the
SEC staff in its reviews of annual and quarterly reports of Fortune
500 companies. Areas addressed by the SEC in its report include:
- Management’s Discussion and Analysis
- Critical Accounting Policy Disclosure
- Non-GAAP Financial Information
- Revenue Recognition
- Restructuring Charges
- Impairment Charges
- Pension Plans
- Segment Reporting
- Securitized Financial Assets and Off-Balance-Sheet Arrangements
- Environmental and Product Liability Disclosures.
Impact of the Current Economic and Business
Environment on Financial Reporting
The Big 5 auditing firms and the AICPA released a report, Impact
of the Current Economic and Business Environment on Financial Reporting (also known as the "Risk Factors" report or the Risk Alert),
on January 9, 2002 that is intended to provide timely information
about the current financial reporting environment; an assessment
of risk factors that may be important for financial statement preparers,
auditors, and audit committees to consider during the current reporting
cycle; and recommendations for actions that can be taken to enhance
financial reporting during the 2001 reporting year.
Impact of the Current Economic and Business Environment on
Financial Reporting addresses the current economic downturn,
the events of September 11, and recent business failures, and includes
actions that may be considered to address such financial reporting
risks.
Issues addressed were varied but include related parties, unusual
transactions, off-balance sheet financing, materiality, and adequacy
of disclosure (just to name a few).
The report concludes with a "call to action" for management,
auditors and audit committees, including specific actions for each
to consider in striving for the common goal of high quality, transparent
financial reporting.
This report also included a few action items that could be taken
by management, auditors and audit committees to make sure that a
company's financial reporting is of the highest quality.
New Strategies and Best Practices in
Internal Audit: An Emerging Model for Building Organizational Value
Focusing on Risk
This report discusses how organizations benefit from an internal
audit function that focuses on organizational strategies and risks.
Intended audience: CEOs, COOs, CFOs, Internal Audit Directors, Board
members, Audit Committee members.
The Compliance Journey
- Making Compliance Sustainable
This KPMG white paper is intended to help companies focus on their
ongoing efforts to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley. As companies reflect
on the considerable efforts they undertook to achieve early compliance
with section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, they are also
thinking about next year and beyond, when they must test, report,
and certify internal control over financial reporting on an ongoing
basis. In the years to come, an organization's ongoing compliance
efforts will evolve, in keeping with other changes in its business
environment and its need to create value. Over time, those efforts
will help reduce compliance costs and risks. This document describes
a model that can provide leaders with a means of evaluating their
organizations to determine how they want their ongoing compliance
efforts to evolve.
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