...The SOX Act The SOX Act Paul Sarbanes a senator and a Representative Michael Oxley in 2002 created the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, also known as the SOX Act. These people drafted this act to protect public companies by regulating the truthfulness along with the consistency of financial accounts. The SOX Act put in place new rules and laws for corporate accountability as well as new penalties. It changed how corporate boards and executives interacted with these auditors. It eliminated the excuses from chief executive officers and chief financial officers. Instead it held them liable for the correctness of financial statements. The SOX Act specifies new financial reporting responsibilities, including accuracy regarding new in-house controls and measures designed to ensure the reliability of their financial records. The SOX Act requires financial reports to include an internal control report. It is designed to show that not only are the company's financial data correct but also the company has confidence in them because satisfactory controls are in place to protect financial data. Financial reports must contain an evaluation of the success of the internal controls. The auditing firms are required to confirm to that assessment. The auditing firm does this after reviewing controls, policies, and procedures during a Section 4040 audit, conducted along with an established financial audit. Roles that ethics plays in business today with the SOX Act require...
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...SOX Act of 2002 Joseph Holmes LAW/421 May 11, 2015 Gregory Henderson University of Phoenix Material Article Review Format Guide MEMORANDUM UNIVERSITY OF PHOENIX DATE: May 11, 2015 TO: Gregory Henderson FROM: Joseph Holmes RE: Year-old Law's Not Enough To Quell Some Investors' Distrust; By Rafael Gerena-Morales and Purva Patel Business WriterS July 30, 2003 ARTICLE SYNOPSIS Looking into many of the surveyor’s opinion they all feel that even with the new Sarbanes-Oxley Act they still cannot trust the market. They still feel that there are loop holes that companies have to still cheat the system. For reluctant investors, Sarbanes-Oxley aims to help them believe the force of law will fortify accounting standards and reduce the opportunities for executives to falsify financial reports that sway stock prices. Even though that this Act has only been working for a year it will take time in order for it work. It has not established any credibility because there has not been any law suits that have gone through any courts yet. Of course there is going to be a distrust between investors and the new established Act. LEGAL ISSUE The legal issue is that the Act has yet been able to get any credibility because it was barely established. “Charles Harper, who ran the Security and Exchange Commission's Miami office for 14 years until 1994, said investors will have to be patient because white-collar crimes can take months if not years to investigate...
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...officials when those rewards had not been endorsed by Playboy's Board. A jury concurred and found that Playboy unlawfully struck back against Zulfer by terminating her for her secured reports under SOX furthermore fired her, violating public policy under California law. The jury recompensed $6 million in unspecified harms with no designation between the SOX claim and the California wrongful termination claim. 2. Decide whether or not the whistleblower was justified in reporting the company’s actions. Provide a rationale for your response. I believe that Ms. Catherine Zulfer, who trusted all bonuses and rewards must be affirmed by the board of directors, blew the whistle on company CFO Pachler's alleged scheme to the Securities and Exchange Commission and Playboy's investors and shareholders. Also Ms. Zulfer states in her claim that she was to a great degree worried that CFO Pachler and CEO Scott Flanders were endeavoring to viably steal, take or change over Playboy assets which she believed Pachler's solicitations was "untrustworthy to shareholders." After she reported those shames, she was on New Year's Eve 2011, a demonstration she calls only a "guise for what really was countering" against her. 3. Examine the extent to which the whistleblower would be protected under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Justify your response. According to the report of UNITED STATES DISTRICT COURT CENTRAL DISTRICT OF CALIFORNIA CASE NO. CV 12-08263-MMM, Catherine Zulfer was employed by Playboy Enterprise...
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...Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) of 2002 LAW/412 July 25, 2014 Instructor Jacques Ward Congress Should Repeal the Sarbanes-Oxley Act Most commentators agree that the SOX Act provided the most sweeping and comprehensive amendments to the ’33 and ’34 Acts in securities law history. (Melvin, 2011 pg. 423) On the other hand, William A. Niskanen believed different. Individuals found it difficult to swallow the Act because it was believe to only be enacted so government official could feel better about confronting only a few points of popular concern instead of resolving the matter. According to Niskanen the SOX act of 2002 is unnecessary, harmful, and inadequate (Niskanen, 2006). Lengthy terms of incarceration and seizure of personal property are penalties under the SOX Act. The act was viewed as unnecessary because the stock exchange had already put into action a policy to address most of the problems given in the SOX Act. Those policies include accounting standards, prosecution for fraud, audits, and financial reporting procedures. Officials believed that both acts handled the same issues. Therefore; congress should deem the SOX act of 2002 unnecessary. The SOX act of 2002 was regarded as damaging because it would “reduce the incentive of corporate executives and directors to seek legal advice” (Niskanen, 2006). It was also seen as prejudicial because it created prohibitions on loans to corporate officers that would create complications for reparation. The act was considered to...
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...Particular things I've Learn After reading the book one of the things i've learn that will help better me is that as a thinker I have wonderful characteristics such as being objective, analytical and detached. I believe that being analytical is is one of the greater qualities that i have as a thinker because in the work place I will sit back and analyze a problem from the beginning to the end rather than just jumping into the situation.This test has also showed me that as a judger I am very focused on having everything mapped out or planned out. When i first saw this it made me think of how on the job I sometimes write everything out step by step when solving problems. These test have also showed me that as an NT leader my strongest quality in the workplace is that I seek for clarity more than others. I used to believe that I came off as trying to be better than other at work when I asked lots of question and went deeper into trying to get an understanding on projects. Personality Types introvert People who are introverted tend to be inward turning, or focused more on internal thoughts, feelings and moods rather than seeking out external stimulationBeing an introvert is completely the opposite of being an extrovert. A person that is an introvert would rather read a book than talk to another person. An introvert is a person that would think about what we want to say rather than just doing it. This is one of the greatest thing about people an introvert because believe it...
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...Open Journal of Accounting, 2013, 2, 8-15 http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ojacct.2013.21003 Published Online January 2013 (http://www.scirp.org/journal/ojacct) Sarbanes-Oxley and the Accounting Profession: Public Interest Implications Sara Ann Reiter1, Paul F. Williams2 2 1 Binghamton University, Binghamton, USA North Carolina State University, Raleigh, USA Email: sreiter@binghamton.edu Received October 31, 2012; revised December 1, 2012; accepted December 12, 2012 ABSTRACT The US accounting profession was caught up in, and some say responsible for, the whirlwind of accounting and business scandals that rocked the US markets in 2002. To restore investor confidence in financial information, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act created a new Public Company Accounting Oversight Board with the authority to set standards for auditors of publicly traded companies, thus ending a century of professional regulation of auditing. In this analysis we employ sociological theories of professionalism [1-4] to help understand the implications of the Sarbanes-Oxley legislation for the accounting profession and for the public interest. We explain why professional self-regulation is important for retaining valuable economic franchises. We also explain why the public interest orientation of the profession is important and how government take-over of auditing standards potentially erodes the public accounting profession’s commitment to the public interest. Self-control over professional work, a key characteristic...
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...The effectiveness of the Sarbanes Oxley Act 2002 The financial scandals of Enron, WorldCom and some other large companies in the beginning of this century, encouraged Congress to introduce the Sarbanes Oxley Act (SOX) 2002 in order to fight the escalating commitment of financial statement fraud. The main objective of this legislation was to recover the investors’ trust in the American stock market, and enhancing the prevention and detection of corporate fraud. In this thesis I would like to analyze the effectiveness of SOX 2002 in preventing financial statement fraud, corporate governance characteristics and effective internal control systems. Finally, the results of the study showed that SOX has not been able to prevent or reduce the likelihood of financial statement fraud. Introduction Since the last 20 years the global economy has been facing a dramatic flow of accounting scandals committed by CEOs and managers of prestigious entities known all around the world. One of the most notorious fraud cases in the last decade was that of Enron where debts were hidden, revenues were inflated and the presence of corruption was uncovered. Other similar cases that also battered the accounting world were those of Adelphia Communications and Global, WorldCom, Parmalat, AIG and Tyco International. Most of these scandals took place during the latter years of the previous century and in the beginning of 2000. These actions obviously triggered a high level of uncertainty regarding...
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...The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 Brandice Vasquez, University of Phoenix July 22, 2012 Linda Moore As businesses progress throughout the years, so must laws and regulations to ensure legal business practices remain ethical. Unfortunately, rules and regulations must be made because regrettable actions from large corporations are tainted with greed and power. Corporate Governance Within the past few years headlines have told distressing stories of unethical practices from large corporations such as Merrill Lynch, Enron, Martha Stewart, Adelphia, Boeing, Rite Aid, Xerox, and many more (Arjoon, 2013). According to Arjoon (2013), the definition of corporate governance, “is the system by which business corporations are directed and controlled. The corporate governance structure specifies the distribution of rights and responsibilities among different participants in the corporation, such as, the board, managers, shareholders and other stakeholders and spells out the rules and procedures for making decisions in corporate affairs. By doing this, it also provides the structure through which the company objectives are set and the means of attaining those objectives and monitoring performance.” The object of corporate governance is to ensure that a corporation is held to strict guidelines that promotes fairness, transparency and accountability, and that any action taking by a manager is of the interest of the major stakeholder groups. The key...
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...SOX Act of 2002 ACC/561 UOP SOX Act of 2002 On July 30, 2002, President Bush signed into law the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which he characterized as "the most far reaching reforms of American business practices since the time of Franklin Delano Roosevelt." The Act mandated a number of reforms to enhance corporate responsibility, enhance financial disclosures and combat corporate and accounting fraud, and created the "Public Company Accounting Oversight Board," also known as the PCAOB, to oversee the activities of the auditing profession. (Securities Exchange Commission, 2014) Over the years, there have been multiple fraud cases involving businesses’ accounting practices. Some of the motives range from misleading potential investors about the company’s earning to attract more investors and get more funding from banks to corporate executives taking a little more cash home in salaries, plus avoiding taxes to increase profits. The SEC was created to enforce statutes such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act and others to try to prevent the massive amount of fraud that has been on the rise. Even after all these measures have been put forward, more than half of U.S. organizations that experienced fraud in the past two years reported an increase in the number of occurrences, according to a new survey by PricewaterhouseCoopers that also found a rise in accounting fraud, bribery and corruption, with cybercrime moving to the forefront of U.S. companies’ concerns. (Cohn, 2014) One of the...
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...Introduction Authored in the wake of the Enron and WorldCom scandal, The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was enacted in 2002, to keep public entities from committing fraudulent financial practices. The name Sarbanes-Oxley derives from former Senator Paul Sarbanes and former Representative Michael Oxley. “The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) was signed into law by President Bush on July 30, 2002, and created a new private sector, nonprofit corporation-the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB)-to oversee the financial reporting of public companies. Among other changes, SOX's sweeping reforms required that a company strengthen auditor independence; have its chief executives sign off on the financial statements; obtain an opinion about its internal control systems; and have an internal audit function that is examined by external auditors” (Grumet, 2007). Part A Audit Committees The Sarbanes-Oxley Act affects audit committees of public company boards of directors. The committee of the board of directors is directly responsible for the public company financial statements, in addition to the appointment, compensation, and oversight of the work of any registered public accounting firm employed by that issuer. In the case of misunderstanding between management team and the auditor’s regarding financial reporting, it is the audit committee’s responsibility to get everyone involved on the same page. In addition, the audit committees need to monitor all financial information communicated...
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...Article Review Edward Gutierrez LAW/421 October 5, 2015 Rachel De Angelo Article Review Business like many other things depends on individuals conducting business honestly. Not everyone follows the accepted rules when they are conducting business. Some business perform unethical practices to make their company look more profitable on paper. This allows them to value their company hire and receive more investments. How SOX Act affect ethical decisions Rules and guidelines have been put in place to deter people from making unethical decisions. There are a specific set of rules that the SOX Act applies to how business people shall perform auditing financial records of a public company. After Enron is states ‘An auditor is prohibited from “contemporaneously” providing a public company auditing client with the following specific types of consulting or other non-audit services: * Bookkeeping or other services related to the accounting records or financial statements of the audit client; * Financial information systems design and implementation; * Appraisal or valuation services, fairness opinions, or contribution-in-kind reports; * Actuarial services; * Internal audit outsourcing services; * Management functions or human resources; * Broker or dealer, investment adviser, or investment banking services; * Legal services and expert services unrelated to the audit; Any other service that the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board determines...
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...Sarbanes-Oxley Acts have to financial markets and what are the similarities or differences between these Acts. The Dodd-Frank Act was proposed by Representative Barney Frank (D-Mass.) in the House of Representatives and former Senator Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, in response to the financial and economic crisis witnessed from 2007-2010. Sarbanes-Oxley established heightened standards for the boards and management of both public companies and public accounting firms. The law was passed after the myriad scandals that rocked American securities markets, e.g., Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, and others. Sarbanes-Oxley is wide in scope, establishing numerous responsibilities on the part of corporate boards, with compliance closely monitored by the government. While employees commonly discover fraud before other monitors, many are reluctant to report it. In an effort to encourage employees to report wrongdoing, Section 301 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) requires audit committees of public companies to establish a reporting channel that allows employees to confidentially and anonymously submit claims involving questionable accounting or auditing matters. Despite these internal whistle blowing programs, there is still concern over employee willingness to report wrongdoing. Recently, the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) adopted the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Provisions of this Act include...
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...Repeal It is logical to believe that Sarbanes Oxley Act, Dodd Frank Act and JOBS Act exists for a reason. Although politic is a very complicated topic and has some sort of influence in establishing a new federal law, SOX, Dodd Frank Act and JOBS Act are reasonably justifiable. After WorldCom and Enron incidents, Sarbanes Oxley Act was established to regulate auditors and public company. After Late 2000’s mortgage crisis and others, Dodd-Frank and JOBS Act was established to regulate financial industry under federal government. Federal regulation seems like always came after a big crisis or downfalls to fix the issue and hopefully prevent future reoccurrence. However, federal government looked like a little bit too reactive because the regulations were always enacted after something bad happened. To make the matter worse, there is no way to proactively prevent any or all frauds or misconducts from happening due to their variety of types. In order to discuss should Sarbanes Oxley, Dodd Frank and JOBS Act be repealed, let’s look into each Act individually and in a more detail sense, In Sarbanes Oxley, some of the important aspects that SOX 2002 deals with are auditor independence and enhanced financial disclosures. It also established Public Company Accounting Oversight Broad (PCAOB) to monitor and oversee public firm’s financial activities. Because there was lack of Audit regulations, it later leaded to the big Enron fraud. Therefore it was clear that something has to be done...
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...Auditor independence refers to the position of the external auditor’s level of personal and financial ties to a particular organization which can sometimes be complex. When deciding whether to accept an auditing engagement, one must judge their independence and objectivity. This is why integrity is imperative in business, especially within the world of audit. Congress passed the law, The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) that applies to publicly held companies and their auditors. It was intended to protect investors by improving accuracy within the laws of the government (SEC, 2001). In addition, it also assists in prevention of financial statement fraud and make items more transparent for protection of the organization. To achieve these parameters,...
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...In response to the many scandals in corporate financial reporting, the United States Congress passed legislature in 2002 that required publicly traded companies to contain within each annual report an internal control report. The internal control report requires companies to state the responsibility of management for establishing and maintaining an adequate internal control structure and procedures for financial reporting. The internal control report must also contain an assessment of the effectiveness of the internal control structure and procedures of the issuer for financial reporting. These rules are referred to as and contained in Section 404 of the Sarbanes Oxley Act (“SOX”). This paper will touch upon an introduction to the SOX Act,...
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