The most popular and comprehensive Open Source ECM platform
Let us know more
Compliance: SOX Pressure Eases For SMBs
Just a few months after the SEC Chairman Christopher Cox said that it would never happen, Cox testified before the House Committee on Small Business last week that the SEC plans to give small businesses an additional year grace period before needing to comply with Section 404 of Sarbanes-Oxley Act. An extension to the December 15, 2008 deadline would push the deadline out to the end of 2009. Businesses with less than $75 million market capitalization would be affected by this change.
Costs related to Sarbanes-Oxley have hit small businesses especially hard. So hard in fact that in 2006, 2% of all small businesses decided to go private rather than have to face up to the requirements imposed by SOX. The SEC seems to have been swayed by pleas from Senators like John Kerry of Massachusetts and Olympia Snowe from Maine, and the House Small Business Chairwoman Representative Nydia Velazquez.
Many small business will consider this temporary SOX reprieve to be good news. But it might be wise if small companies take advantage of the extra time to prepare for what seems to be the inevitable requirement of compliance.
