Section 201: Services Outside the Scope of Practice of Auditors; Prohibited Activities.

It shall be “unlawful” for a registered public accounting firm to provide any non-audit service to an issuer contemporaneously with the audit, including: (1) bookkeeping or other services related to the accounting records or financial statements of the audit client; (2) financial information systems design and implementation; (3) appraisal or valuation services, fairness opinions, or contribution-in-kind reports; (4) actuarial services; (5) internal audit outsourcing services; (6) management functions or human resources; (7) broker or dealer, investment adviser, or investment banking services; (8) legal services and expert services unrelated to the audit; (9) any other service that the Board determines, by regulation, is impermissible. The Board may, on a case-by-case basis, exempt from these prohibitions any person, issuer, public accounting firm, or transaction, subject to review by the Commission.

It will not be unlawful to provide other non-audit services if they are pre-approved by the audit committee in the following manner. The bill allows an accounting firm to “engage in any non-audit service, including tax services,” that is not listed above, only if the activity is pre-approved by the audit committee of the issuer. The audit committee will disclose to investors in periodic reports its decision to pre-approve non-audit services. Statutory insurance company regulatory audits are treated as an audit service, and thus do not require pre-approval.

The pre-approval requirement is waived with respect to the provision of non-audit services for an issuer if the aggregate amount of all such non-audit services provided to the issuer constitutes less than 5 % of the total amount of revenues paid by the issuer to its auditor (calculated on the basis of revenues paid by the issuer during the fiscal year when the non-audit services are performed), such services were not recognized by the issuer at the time of the engagement to be non-audit services; and such services are promptly brought to the attention of the audit committee and approved prior to completion of the audit.

The authority to pre-approve services can be delegated to 1 or more members of the audit committee, but any decision by the delegate must be presented to the full audit committee.

Section 203: Audit Partner Rotation.

The lead audit or coordinating partner and the reviewing partner must rotate off of the audit every 5 years.

Section 204: Auditor Reports to Audit Committees.

The accounting firm must report to the audit committee all “critical accounting policies and practices to be used all alternative treatments of financial information within [GAAP] that have been discussed with management ramifications of the use of such alternative disclosures and treatments, and the treatment preferred” by the firm.

Section 206: Conflicts of Interest.

The CEO, Controller, CFO, Chief Accounting Officer or person in an equivalent position cannot have been employed by the company’s audit firm during the 1-year period preceding the audit.