The Sarbanes Oxley Act ( Act ) Essay

Throughout history and in our own time, legitimate accounting methods have been utilized to fraudulently engage in manipulating activities that results in illicit gains to the perpetrators and losses to individuals and financial institutions.

The Sarbanes-Oxley is a U.S. federal law that has generated much controversy, and involved the response to the financial scandals of some large corporations such as Enron, Tyco International, WorldCom and Peregrine Systems. These scandals brought down the public confidence in auditing and accounting firms. The law is named after Senator Paul Sarbanes Democratic Party and GOP Congressman Michael G. Oxley. It was passed by large majorities in both Congress and the Senate and covers and sets new performance standards for boards of directors and managers of companies and accounting mechanisms of all publicly traded companies in America. It also introduces criminal liability for the board of directors and a requirement by

The Sarbanes Oxley Act is an act passed by the United States Congress to protect investors from the possibility of fraudulent accounting activities by corporation. The Sarbanes Oxley Act has strict reforms to improve financial disclosures from corporations and accounting fraud. The acts goals are designed to ensure that publicly traded corporations document what financial controls they are using and they are certified in doing so. The Sarbanes Oxley Act sets the highest level and most general requirements but it imposes the possibility of criminal penalties for corporate financial officers. The Sarbanes Oxley Act sets provisions that are used throughout numerous amounts of corporations. It holds companies to a larger responsibility and a higher standard with accounting principles and the accuracy of financial statements.

Between the years 2000 and 2002 there were over a dozen corporate scandals involving unethical corporate governance practices. The allegations ranged from faulty revenue reporting and falsifying financial records, to the shredding and destruction of financial documents (Patsuris, 2002). Most notably, are the cases involving Enron and Arthur Andersen. The allegations of the Enron scandal went public in October 2001. They included, hiding debt and boosting profits to the tune of more than one billion dollars. They were also accused of bribing foreign governments to win contacts and manipulating both the California and Texas power markets (Patsuris, 2002). Following these allegations, Arthur Andersen was investigated for, allegedly,

According to Jennings (2015), the Sarbanes Oxley Act’s purpose is “An Act to protect investors by improving the accuracy and reliability of corporate disclosures made pursuant to the securities laws, and for other purposes” (p. 246). This act was enacted because of several major accounting scandals. One company with such a scandal was Enron.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, which is also known as the Public Company Accounting and Investor Protection Act or the Corporate and Auditing Accountability and Responsibility Act and then more commonly called Sarbanes-Oxley, or SOX, is a United States federal law that set new or enhanced standards for all of the United States public company boards, management and public accounting firms.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passes in 2002 in response to a handful of large corporate scandals that occurred between the years 2000 to 2002, resulting in the losses of billions of dollars by investors. Enron, Worldcom and Tyco are probably the most well known companies that were involved in these scandals, but there were a number of other companies guilty of such things as well. The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed as a way to crackdown on corporations by setting new and improved standards that all United States’ public companies and accounting firms were and are required to abide by. It also works to hold top level executives accountable for the company, and if fraudulent behaviors are discovered then the executives could find themselves in hot water. The punishments for such fraudulence could be as serious as 20 years jail time. (Sarbanes-Oxley Act, 2014). The primary motivation for the act was to prevent future scandals from happening, or at least, make it much more difficult for them to happen. The act was also passed largely to protect the people—the shareholders—from corporations, their executives, and their boards of directors. Critics tend to argue that the act is to complicated, and costs to much to abide by, leading to the United States losing its “competitive edge” in the global marketplace (Sarbanes-Oxley Act, 2014). The Sarbanes-Oxley act, like most things, has its pros and cons. It is costly; studies have shown that this act has cost companies millions of

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) was passed by Congress in 2002 as a response to large corporate accounting fraud scandals that resulted from blatant abuse of self-regulation. SOX “is the most far-reaching and significant new federal regulatory statute affecting accountants and governance since the Securities Acts of 1933 and 1934” (Wegman, 2007). The main goal of SOX was to protect investors from fraud by strengthening oversight and improving internal control. In the discussion below are the advantages and disadvantages of SOX as well as an opinion regarding how successful, or unsuccessful, the SOX regulations were for the prevention of fraud and protection of small business.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act, or SOX Act, was enacted on July 30, 2002. Since it was enacted that summer it has changed how the public business handle their accounting and auditing. The federal law was made coming off of a number of large corporations involved in scandals. For example a company like Enron was caught in accounting fraud in late 2001 when the company was using false financial statements. Once Enron was caught that had many lawsuits filed against them and had to file for bankruptcy. It was this scandal that played a big part in producing the Sarbanes-Oxley act in 2002.

Sarbanes-Oxley Act contains 11 titles, they provide specific guidelines and regulations for financial reporting. The titles are: Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB), Auditor Independence, Corporate Responsibility, Enhanced Financial Disclosures, Analyst Conflict of Interest, Commission Resources and Authority, Studies and Reports, Corporate and Criminal Fraud Accountability, White Collar Crime Penalty Enhancement, Corporate Tax Returns and Corporate Fraud Accountability. In the introduction of the act, it states that it is an act “to protect investors by improving the accuracy and reliability of corporate disclosures made pursuant to the securities laws, and for other purposes”. (Sarbanes-Oxley Act, 2002)

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) was enacted in July 30, 2002, by Congress to protect shareholders and the general public from fraudulent corporate practices and accounting errors and to maintain auditor independence.   In protecting the shareholders and the general public the SOX Act is intended to improve the transparency of the financial reporting.   Financial reports are to be certified by the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) and Chief Financial Officer (CFO) creating increased responsibility and independence with auditing by independent audit firms. In discussing the SOX Act, we will focus on how this act affects the CEOs; CFOs; outside independent audit firms; the advantages and a

There are so many organizations today that are using the Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) legislation that helps to safeguard their company and their financial records. The Sarbanes-Oxley act began in 2002 and the purpose behind this act was to protect organizations, it had a major impact on accounting and record keeping. Because of Enron, they passed this act for publicly-traded corporations to better implement control to their enterprise data. “Named after Senator Paul Sarbanes and Representative Michael Oxley, who also set a number of deadlines for compliance” (SOX Law ). “The Sarbanes-Oxley Act is arranged into eleven titles, but the most important sections within these are often considered to be 302, 401, 404, 409, 802 and 906” (SOX Law ). The

For just a brief moment, imagine yourself sometime in the future. You have been recently married, you just started a brand new job, and are looking to start a family. As a way to plan for financial security, you have done some research into financial investments. You are hoping to build a portfolio, which will be a mix of low, median, and high-risk stock. Flash forward into the future by 20 years. During this time, the stock prices have appreciated and depreciated, yet overall done remarkably well. All of a sudden, one morning you wake up to some disastrous news. One of the company’s you invested in, which held a majority of the portfolio of stock, has been participating in financial fraud. While they had been presenting themselves well, under the surface deceptive accounting and financial practices were being used and now the company is broke. All of your hard earned money which was invested in that company is now gone-down to the last penny. Does this sound vaguely familiar? It should. In 2001, Enron, a United States company, became the very largest bankruptcy and stock collapse in history (Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia). As a result, in 2002, The Sarbanes-Oxley Act was passed as means to prevent fraud, improve financial reporting, and gain back the trust that was previously lost by investors. Although numerous publicly traded companies, which are companies registered on the U.S. stock exchange, were less than happy to welcome

In Section 404 of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002, Management is required to evaluate the effectiveness of the internal control of their company and also to assess the company’s effectiveness of their internal controls. According to the PCAOB’s AS 5, auditors are required to come up with their own conclusions about which accounts are considered significant when the auditor has evaluated the assessments made by the company’s management. Evaluation methodology will be utilized to examine and determine the magnitude of control deficiencies within Sarbox Scooter, Inc. The significant accounts for an integrated audit and significant locations will also be identified through scoping and evaluation judgments.

Section 404 is the main section dealing with the internal control and more concern arises with