Its Future in Limbo, the PCAOB Asks for More Money
As the Supreme Court prepares to consider the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board's fate, the board seeks a budget increase. 

Sarah Johnson, CFO.com
December 3, 2009

The week before Supreme Court justices will hear reasons why the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board should be dissolved, the auditor watchdog appears undeterred and has asked for a 16% boost to its 2010 budget.

Members of the board attribute the request for an additional $25.7 million — for a total budget of $183.3 million — to the need for 60 more employees, as the board expects to do more international inspections, undertake a new group of audit firms, and deal with the increasing complexity of accounting rules. The board also expects increased pressure from its regulator to ensure that high-quality audits are occurring at publicly traded companies.

"Changes in economic and business conditions during the past 18 months have made auditing more difficult, particularly in areas like financial-instrument valuation, impairment, going-concern evaluation, and other aspects of financial reporting that require significant estimates and judgments," said PCAOB acting chairman Daniel Goelzer during a meeting to approve the proposed budget earlier this week. "As a result, our inspections are more challenging and the need for thoughtful risk assessment is greater."

Nearly half of the additional $25.7 million will go toward the board's inspections division. In addition, for the first time, the PCAOB will be taking in registrations and annual reports from an estimated 1,200 accounting firms that audit broker-dealers (on top of the more than 2,000 already registered with the board). Before Bernard Madoff's notorious Ponzi scheme, these firms were not required to register with the PCAOB.

Assuming the budget is approved — which is likely since the Securities and Exchange Commission, which oversees the PCAOB, works closely with the board during the budgeting process — it will mark a 78% increase over the six-year-old organization's first full-year budget of $103 million, in 2004. The request could rankle CFOs who may see their accounting-support fees rise next year. "In this day and age, there are not a lot of CFOs who have budgets that are increasing," notes Andy Burczyk, regional attest leader at accounting firm Mayer Hoffman McCann. "This is just another expense that public companies are going to have to bear."