SEC May Postpone Deadline For Small Company Compliance With Sarbanes-Oxley Beyond 2008, Says Reuters

The deadline for small US companies to fully comply with Sarbanes-Oxley accounting legislation could be extended past 2008 if the costs still exceed the benefits of the law, according to Reuters, citing comments made by the top accountant at the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. “For micro-cap companies … they will not have to have an internal control audit until 2008, and if we don’t see the cost-benefits are in line by then, we’ll have to defer it even more,” Conrad Hewitt, chief accountant at the SEC, said at a New York State Society of CPAs conference in New York, according to the report. The SEC is currently requiring companies with a public market capitalization of less then $75 million to conduct a management assessment of their internal controls. But those companies will not have to get an internal controls audit by external auditors until 2008.