Everyone should bear the cost of accounting oversight. (The Spirit of Accounting)

Accounting Today, May, 2003 by Paul B.W. Miller

On March 14, 2003, the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board solicited comments on its proposed funding plans under the guidelines of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002.

Under the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, the PCAOB's financial support is to come from fees paid by public accounting firms and public companies. The proposed rule outlines a support fee formula.

The basic features of the proposal call for the fees to be collected from public companies with monthly average market caps that exceed $25 million and from investment companies with average monthly market caps that exceed $250 million. The funding will allocate the PCAOB's annual budget (net of fees paid by accounting firms) to individual companies based on their average monthly market cap in relation to the...