The Internal Revenue Service announced a settlement initiative for executives and companies that participated in an abusive tax avoidance transaction involving the transfer of stock options or restricted stock to family controlled entities.Under this scheme, executives, often facilitated by their corporate employers, transferred stock options to family controlled partnerships and other related entities typically created for the sole purpose of receiving the options and avoiding taxes on compensation income normally taxed to the executive.

Documents related to Ernst & Young LLP's audit of now-defunct Metropolitan Mortgage & Securities will remain private, a bankruptcy judge in Washington state has ruled.U.S.

The Internal Revenue Service did nothing improper in investigating inappropriate political activity by certain charity groups, although timing the probes so close to the presidential election looked suspicious, a new report says.An external audit randomly selected 40 of the churches, civic groups or charities that were investigated and found that their activities could be characterized as favoring Republicans in 18 cases, Democrats in 12 cases and the Green Party in one case, the Associated Press reported.

U.S. public companies are looking for a price break from their auditors this year.The internal control requirements of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act forced many companies to spend more than twice what they budgeted last year, so they're looking to pay far less this year, according to a study given to Reuters by CFO Executive Board, a division of Washington research group Corporate Executive Board Co.Section 404 of SOX requires that the companies' external auditors produce details of their internal controls and how those controls will combat fraud by next month.

Dallas investor Sam Wyly has filed a lawsuit against Ernst & Young LLP, claiming that the firm's audit influenced him to sell his software company in exchange for stock in Computer Associates International Inc.Ernst & Young was the auditor for both companies when Sterling Software Inc., which Wyly headed, was sold to Computer Associates for $4 billion in March 2000, the Wall Street Journal reported.

The AICPA has officially rolled out the new approved tagline that accompanies the CPA logo: "America Counts on CPAs." This tagline will be used exclusively with the CPA logo, making "Never Underestimate the Value" obsolete. Members should note that there will be a transition phase during which existing inventory (i.e., AICPA stationery, brochures, etc.) that includes the old tagline will be used for cost efficiency purposes.

The high-tech trade group AeA has made several recommendations concerning internal controls requirements, with the group projecting compliance will cost companies $35 billion this year, Dow Jones Newswires reported.The $35 billion pricetag is signifcantly higher than expected, with the Securities and Exchange Commission anticipating in 2003 that costs would average around $1.24 billion per year, with higher costs in initial years.The SEC has already acted to suspend compliance for small- and medium-sized companies because of the higher costs."Smaller companies neither require, nor can

Grant Thornton LLP, the U.S. member firm of Grant Thornton International, this week reported that revenues climbed 31% in the calendar year ending Dec.

PricewaterhouseCoopers is publicly stating that it violated certain auditor independence rules. The announcement comes on the tails of the issuance of quarterly reports by multi-billion dollar engineering firm Parker Hannifin Corp. The report issued by Parker Hannifin last week disclosed irregularities in cash-handling services performed by a PwC affiliate in China.The next day, PwC spokesman David Nestor announced that the issue had come to light in an internal review at the Big Four firm, and that a number of other clients besides Parker Hannifin are affected.