We all do it. Using the company's e-mail system to send jokes, “talk” with friends or even comment on the boss–it's considered just a small part of an ordinary work day.But consider this: How would you like those e-mails to be made public? An anti-spam software maker has done just that, posting 515,000 e-mail messages from Enron employees at EnronEmail.com. The e-mails were released to the public in 2003 by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, which collected them during its Enron investigation. The company, InBoxer Inc.

Questionable Refund Program. “We will announce plans in the very near future to institute notification procedures as well as significant processing improvements to minimize the number of taxpayers whose refunds are frozen unnecessarily,” Everson said. Senators of both parties had requested the review following congressional testimony by the National Taxpayer Advocate, Nina Olson, New York Times reports.The IRS said that members of Congress and the National Taxpayer Advocate had raised legitimate issues regarding the length of delay and lack of notification for refund claims.

A federal government watchdog group has stepped up its fight against what it alleges is a blatant concealment of public records by the Internal Revenue Service (IRS).The Transactional Records Access Center (TRAC) last week filed a motion in U.S. District Court in Seattle, Wash., accusing the IRS of failing to abide by a 1976 court order requiring the agency to make available certain detailed information regarding its enforcement of tax laws. In a separate action in April, TRAC sued the IRS in U.S. District Court in Washington, D.C.

Inmates are filing false tax returns and scamming the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). It’s a nationwide problem to the tune of $68 million from 18,000 prisoners, for the 2004 tax year alone. The Arizona Star reports that convicts are responsible for more than one-seventh of all false refunds nationally.The prisoners found to be filing false refunds avoid prosecution from state and federal officials since they are already behind bars, according to the Arizona Star.

Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) has been law since July 2002 and the collapses and financial carnage created by Enron, Tyco International, WorldCom, Adelphia Communications, HealthSouth, and Cendant, may have lost their prominence in people’s minds. Bloomberg reports executives are becoming more vocal that SOX has become an overzealous exercise to contain and detect corporate corruption. Section 404 is the current battlefield. “I would like to see it opened and revised. Sarbanes-Oxley has become extraordinarily expensive,” said David Chavern, vice president of capital markets at the U.S.

The former CEO of American International Group (AIG) will not face criminal charges initiated by New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer. Spitzer may continue to pursue civil charges against Greenberg with an amended civil complaint containing new information. The civil suit is primarily based on AIG’s misuse of finite reinsurance polices that concealed reserve issues from AIG’s balance sheet, according to TheStreet.com. “The office decided months ago to pursue the case as a civil matter,” Spitzer spokesman Darren Dopp told USA Today.

Things seem to be looking up for KPMG recently.On Monday, U.S. District Judge Dennis M. Cavanaugh gave preliminary approval to a proposed $225 million class-action settlement by KPMG and Sidley Austin Brown & WoodLLP, the Associated Press reports. KPMG would pay 80 percent of the settlement, according to the Associated Press.A conclusion to the suit over the sale of questionable tax shelters would be good news for KPMG’s 166 new partners.

The Justice Department has issued an expanded indictment in the continuing probe of KPMG. This indictment amends the first indictment issued in August by adding 43 counts of tax evasion and two counts of obstruction of the Internal Revenue Service (IRS). Each of the 19 defendants has not been charged with the same offenses according to the indictment.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Tuesday let stand a lower court ruling against two former Gemstar-TV Guide International, Inc. executives, allowing the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) to freeze their severance payments under a provision of the Sarbanes Oxley Act of 2002.