Sarbanes-Oxley Act Essay

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The Sarbanes-Oxley Act
The Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act, more commonly known as The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOA), was created by Paul Sarbanes and Michael Oxley and signed into law on July 30, 2002. This act was created as a result of the numerous, fraudulent and financial corporate scandals that occurred within corporations such as Enron and many others. SOA’s purpose is to serve as a means to safeguard the stockholders, as well as other investors from any illegal business accounting procedures. In short, the SOA controls and standardizes financial processes as well as corporate authority. With the enactment of Sarbanes-Oxley, numerous changes were made to auditing procedures that were not used beforehand. These changes include the start and introduction of risk management pertaining to
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In addition to this finding, it has been discovered that exterior audit fees, compliance expenditures and scrutiny are ever-increasing. The reason for this increase is attributed to the nature of dynamic compliances. As a result, corporations are searching for avenues in order to attain more value because of their compliance actions. This in itself has shifted to an added concentration towards the methods and means that boards carry out their obligations while auditing committees are charged with more authority and accountability. For example, internal controls are required to be reported. These or any such accounts of wrongdoing are not only to be documented in a report but it must be reported to the SEC and those that are offenders may be fined or possibly tender their