Accounting Law Commons^™

The Case For Individual Audit Partner Accountability, Colleen Honigsberg

Vanderbilt Law Review

Despite repeated regulatory interventions, accounting failures continue to persist in companies around the world. In this Article, I explain why regulatory oversight, private enforcement, and firm-level reputational sanctions are unlikely to induce accountants to take optimal levels of care when auditing corporate financials. Instead, our best chance for improving audit quality lies in establishing a market for individual audit partners’ brands—a market that can hold individual auditors responsible for their mistakes.

The Article begins by identifying four key benefits to this approach. First, forcing auditors to be publicly associated with any audit failures occurring on their watch will induce them …

An Examination Of Some Considerations Relating To The Adoption And Use Of The Last-In, First-Out (Lifo) Inventory Accounting Method, Mark F. Dalton

Vanderbilt Law Review

LIFO is a special statutory election available to taxpayers in lieu of the normal methods by which inventory identification and valuation is accomplished under section 471 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1954. The applicable Code section, section 472, and the regulations thereunder are highly technical provisions containing many pitfalls for the unsuspecting. Furthermore, a LIFO election for tax purposes affects a company's financial reports to shareholders and creditors, and raises business considerations that must not be overlooked. In addition, special interpretive problem areas and deficiencies present in the statute should give pause to taxpayers contemplating a switch to LIFO. …

Recent Cases, Gregg N. Gimsley

Vanderbilt Law Review

The instant decision is of major importance because it clearly defines a more liberal standard for aiding and abetting under section 10(b), reads a requirement of due care by accountants into section 17(a), and serves as an additional warning to the accounting profession of its expanding responsibilities in the field of securities regulation. By establishing negligence, duty to disclose, and causal connection, rather than actual knowledge, substantial assistance,and reliance, as the major elements of aiding and abetting a violation of Rule 10b-5, the Seventh Circuit has given this cause of action the broadest interpretation to date. Nothing precluded this interpretation …

Truth In Financial Statements: An Introduction, Douglas W. Hawes

Vanderbilt Law Review

When used in relation to a periodical, the word "symposium"refers to "a collection of opinions on a subject." The word derives from the Greek "sympinein," to drink together, and originally was applied to a drinking party in which conversation and intellectual entertainment played a vital part. To our "party" we have invited a distinguished group of authors representing in some cases widely differing points of view. They have contributed articles dealing with various aspects of these problems of financial reporting and auditing. We leave to you, the reader, and to those engaged in the continuing debate the final judgment on …

Current Problems Of Accountants'responsibilities To Third Parties, T. J. Fiflis

Vanderbilt Law Review

When the auditor begins the audit program, he will record in "working papers" his work and findings. Each page will be dated and initialed by all persons who dealt with it. The papers should be indexed and bound and retained for some years. They should also be comprehensible as they are intended for use by others as well as for later use.

A trial balance is usually the first working paper. Other standard working papers are data from the corporate charter, by-laws,and minutes and analyses of accounts, prescribed by the audit program. One of the last working papers will be …

We Often Paint Fakes, Abraham J. Brilof

Vanderbilt Law Review

To begin, the profession has disseminated the message far and wide that its members are the high priests responsible for the interpretation and application of a very special body of knowledge known as "generally accepted accounting principles" usually referred to as "GAAP." On analysis one quickly discerns that no such defined body of principles exists. Some commentators maintain, in fact,that not a single accounting precept is deserving of the designation"principle" and these exegetics urge that the critical phrase be changed to read "generally accepted accounting standards," hence" GAAS." Others, reflecting on the evils perpetrated in the name of GAAP and/or …

Accounting Standards In The United States And The United Kingdom: Their Nature, Causes And Consequences, George J. Benston

Vanderbilt Law Review

The purpose of this article is to account for the existence of differing accounting standards in the United States and the United Kingdom despite a common language, common practice and a fundamentally common political and economic base in the two countries. What factors explain the fact that, while accounting standards in the United States are codified and explicit, they remain on the whole uncodified and implicit in Great Britain? From which system does the investor more likely benefit? The first section of this paper begins with descriptions of auditing and reporting standards in each country. The factors which influence the …

Cash And Accrual Methods Of Income Tax Accounting, William J. Bowe

Vanderbilt Law Review

Accounting concepts and principles have long been part of the stock in trade of the trust and estate lawyer, the corporate and business advisor, the family investment counselor.' Among the most elementary of these concepts are the cash and accrual methods of accounting. The general practitioner has shown a strange reluctance to grapple with these terms. Yet as a result of the develop- ing case law they have in the field of taxation more of a legal than an account- ing flavor in that the policy considerations on which judicial decisions are based have so shaped and altered their traditional …

Cash And Accrual Methods Of Income Tax Accounting, William J. Bowe

Vanderbilt Law Review

It is the purpose of this article to introduce the two methods of income'tax accounting to the general practitioner who is not a specialist in the field and to the student who is attempting to learn the subject of income taxation. The article simply seeks to express in a clear and orderly fashion the developed law on the topic.