Legislated restriction of non-audit services would seriously impact not only small accounting firms but small and midsized businesses across America, according to testimony presented to the U.S. Senate by William Balhoff, CPA, and the chair of PCPS, a membership division within the American Institute of CPAs that represents the interests of over 6,100 local and regional CPA firms.
In response to the debacle of the Enron Corp., both the Senate and the House of Representatives are working on bills that would attempt to prevent corporate financial disasters that are caused by questionable accounting. The House bill seems to be following the service restrictions that the nation’s biggest accounting firms have already committed to.
It would require firms to abstain from providing internal audits and technology implementation services to the public …