US GAO report on consolidation in the accounting profession

  • News default Image

13 Aug 2003

A new report by the US General Accounting Office on Public Accounting Firms: Mandated Study on Consolidation and Competition (PDF 1,992k) includes a survey of independent auditors of SEC-registered companies.

Based on responses from 47 firms, the GAO found:

  • 49% of the accounting firms said that changes in and growing complexity of accounting and auditing standards had a "great upward influence" on their costs in the past decade, and 51% said those factors had a "moderate upward influence".
  • 28% of the accounting firms said that changes in and growing complexity of accounting and auditing standards had a "great upward influence" on their fees in the past decade; 64% said those factors had a "moderate upward influence"; and 7% said they had "little or no influence".
  • 37% of the accounting firms said that changes in and growing complexity of accounting and auditing standards had a made it "much harder" to maintain audit quality in the past decade; 57% said those factors made it "somewhat harder" to maintain quality; and 7% said they had "little or no effect" on audit quality.

Correction list for hyphenation

These words serve as exceptions. Once entered, they are only hyphenated at the specified hyphenation points. Each word should be on a separate line.