Highlights.

* The AICPA Center for Public Company Audit Firms began operations January 1, 2004, as a voluntary membership organization for firms that audit or are interested in auditing public companies. Following the Sarbanes-Oxley Act's creation of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) to inspect and discipline auditors of SEC-registered issuers, the Institute established the center to achieve the following objectives:

* Enhance the quality of member firms' public company audit practices through the timely communication to members of SEC- and PCAOB-related news, the development of technical and educational information for members and the promotion of best practices.

* Provide a forum for member firms to discuss and express their views on matters that affect public company audits.

* Maintain relationships with member firms and act as a liaison to the SEC and the PCAOB on their behalf.

* Propose to regulators solutions to issues member firms identify, and prepare comment letters on rule proposals that affect public company auditors.

* Administer a peer review program--focused on member firms' private company audit practices--that will bridge the PCAOB's inspection of member firms' public company audit practices.

Additional information on the center is available at www.aicpa.org/cpcaf. Questions or feedback can be sent by e-mail to [e-mail].

* Mark VanDeveer, chairman of the AICPA IRS practice and procedures committee, said at a January meeting of the IRS oversight board--an independent body responsible for providing the service with long-term guidance and direction--that the IRS's principal strategic goals for the next five years should be the continuation of its reorganization, further modernization of its information technology systems and strengthening of its enforcement activities.

For example, while praising communications efforts accompanying the service's restructuring, he cited the absence of what he said may seem like a mundane resource but that practitioners actually consider essential--an up-to-date telephone directory of personnel in each of the IRS's four operational divisions. Many practitioners represent clients covered by more than one of these divisions.

VanDeveer also said the IRS should continue to sponsor the Office of the National Taxpayer Advocate and urged the oversight board and Congress to support renewed funding for making IRS systems more capable of fulfilling the agency's various functions. In addition, he said the AICPA backs the service's major compliance initiatives related to abusive tax shelters, offshore credit card users, high-income nonfilers and unreported income and supports IRS efforts to reengineer its examination and collection efforts so that taxpayer audits focus on material issues.

* The international financial reporting interpretations committee of the International Accounting Standards Board released two Draft Interpretations: D3, Determining whether an Arrangement contains a Lease, and D4, Decommissioning, Restoration and Environmental Rehabilitation Funds (www.lasb.org.uk). The first contains guidance on determining whether arrangements that do not take the legal form of a lease (for example, certain take-or-pay contracts) should nevertheless be accounted for in accordance with IAS 17, Leases. The second addresses the accounting to be adopted by entities that contribute to funds used to help meet decommissioning costs of environmental rehabilitation costs. Comments are due March 19.