What Sarbanes-Oxley Really Means for Tax Services

Authors

Richard Thompson Ainsworth, Boston University School of LawFollow

Author granted license

Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

8-31-2004

ISSN

0958-7594

Publisher

Euromoney Institutional Investor

Language

en-US

Abstract

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) mandates wide-ranging reforms in the public company financial reporting process. SOX seeks to restore confidence in public company management following the scandals that shook the US securities market (SOX treats tax as a suspect function. Only tax services must be separately itemized along with auditor fees. Each of the highly-publicized security scandals involved either tax positions taken by the companies or the determination of tax reserves). The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), which monitors auditing, quality control, ethics, independence and other reporting standards and whose authority extends to non-US public accounting firms, are issuing SOX regulations. Assuring that global businesses use trusted third-party tax providers is a key SOX goal.

Recommended Citation

Richard T. Ainsworth, What Sarbanes-Oxley Really Means for Tax Services , in 15 International Tax Review 27 (2004).
Available at: https://scholarship.law.bu.edu/faculty_scholarship/1505