Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) Chair Paul Atkins and the commission’s Chief Accountant Kurt Hohl are said to have urged the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) to postpone the implementation of its new quality control (QC) standard by at least one year, according to four sources with knowledge of the matter.
The new QC 1000, A Firm’s System of Quality Control—which was adopted by the PCAOB in May 2024 and approved by a divided SEC in September—imposes a combination of principles-based and prescriptive requirements to make sure that audit firms maintain a robust QC system to better protect investors.
QC is foundational to audit quality because it deals with a firm’s system of employee training and compliance with professional standards and its standards of quality. But because the PCAOB had continued to find deficiencies in audit engagements as well as problems in firms’ QC systems, the board said the standard needs to be improved.
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