It’s time to wrap up the second quarter of 2021. The quarter was pretty slow for issuances of final standards. In this blog, we’ll give an executive overview of the standards issued in the second quarter by FASB, GASB and the AICPA. This will keep you up to date with the changes in financial reporting and auditing.
President Biden has issued an executive order requiring federal agencies to look at financial risk related to climate change including potentially requiring public entities to disclose certain items. ESG disclosures are a growing area for disclosures and entities like the SASB and GRI have been providing best practices.
The AICPA has extended the comment period for the trio of Quality Management proposals from June 11, 2021 to August 31, 2021; likely due to the extended tax season and lots of other exciting happenings. They have also provided a few glossary documents that provide executive summaries about the proposals and a sample comment letter template for those who may not be comfortable with writing feedback from scratch. They are also hosting a series of round tables in May and June that are open to the public that will feature a summary of the proposed statements followed by a live Q&A. Each roundtable will offer up to 1.5 hours of CPE and be limited to no more than 50 participants.
GAO has issued a technical update to Yellow Book. In a very rare move, GAO has made modifications to a handful of paragraphs in the 2018 Yellow Book. The updates address the concept of equity, SKE for nonaudit services and changes to evaluation of internal controls for performance audits. Updates were effective upon issuance.
The first quarter of 2021 is a wrap. It was a light quarter for standard setting and given everything else we have going on, that’s probably not a bad thing! This blog covers the few standards that were finalized in Q1.
The AICPA has issued a Technical Q&A to address common questions regarding what qualifies as a third party assessment and which standards including independence should be applied by the third party. The TQA provides guidance on what qualifies as a TQA, which independence rules apply and which standards can be used by CPAs.
