US Audit Board’s Role Still Sparks Debate Two Decades Post-Enron

Congress is reconsidering the accounting guardrails it put in place more than two decades ago to ensure investors can trust the revenues and asset values listed companies publish.

Republican budget proposals would abolish the US audit regulator and reassign its work to the Securities and Exchange Commission. While lawmakers negotiate over what will end up in a final version of their tax and spending bill, the proposals have prompted debate over how best to regulate auditors and the role of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.

A member of the board and two former executives turned whistleblowers of once-corporate titans Enron Corp. and WorldCom Inc. spoke with Bloomberg Tax reporter Amanda Iacone about whether the audit regulator should remain independent or whether it would benefit from being folded into the federal government.

On this episode of Talking Tax, Sherron Watkins, a former Enron finance executive, and Cynthia Cooper, a former WorldCom chief audit executive, argue that Congress shouldn’t scrap an agency that oversees auditors that act as investors’ last line of defense.

To Christina Ho, a current PCAOB member who has objected to the board’s approach, moving auditor oversight to the SEC would counter what she sees as regulatory overreach and provide new opportunities to improve audit quality.

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