The Jenkins Report, issued in June 1962, is the popular title of Report of the Company Law Committee, a 14-member body including, apparently, but two accountants, appointed late in 1959 by the President of Great Britain Board of Trade, the latter organization having, among its other regulatory powers, the responsibilities for licensing corporations and a number of functions. The Committee, headed by Lord Jenkins, a prominent British jurist, was asked "to review and report upon the provisions and working of the Companies Act of 1948" and upon certain other acts of Great Britain Parliament; and "to consider in the light of modem conditions and practices, including the practice of takeover bids, what should be the duties of directors and the rights of shareholders; and generally to recommend what changes in the law are desirable." At the outset one is impressed with the restricted approach to the problems confronting the Committee. Its chief concern is with ownership and controls; the public interest in the interrelations of directors and stockholders only by indirection received the Committee's attention. The Committee's report supplies a valuable source for the comparison of British corporate practice with that in the United States.

Reviews the book "The Federal Taxing Process," by Roy Blough.

This article presents information regarding the recent studies by members of the American Accounting Association's Committee on National Income. Members of the Committee have been engaged on independent projects of their own choosing and their findings have for the most part been reviewed by the Committee at its several meetings. This does not mean, however, that the ideas of each Committee member have been conformed to a common pattern. It has been the judgment of Committee members that the Committee's activities should continue for some time to come to assume the form of individual explorations within the field, and that the particular topics chosen for investigation and report should at this stage reflect both the individual's background and his immediate field of interest. Each member of the Committee expresses the hope that his paper will be regarded as work in progress and that his analysis and suggestions may aid future Committees in charting their programs.

To institute a workable plan for a system of internal audit there must be present those essentials of an underlying structure of management without which a good internal auditor is likely to suffer from continued frustration and the best internal auditor, if he can stay on the job and sweat it out, may find his work singularly ineffective. The first of these organizational essentials is a full-scale recognition of the nature and interdependence of authority, responsibility, and accountability: administrative powers that may be called the three basic operational activators. Second among the essentials is the firing of centers of activity within the various parts of the organizational structure. Third is the empowering of each center with the three operational activators in just the right degree: a quantity and quality of authority designed to provide some freedom of action, the exercise of judgment, no matter how limited, and the development of enthusiasm and pride in work done; a charge of responsibility that will develop, exercise, perhaps even tax supervisory capacities, with substantial curtailment of the need of continuous scrutiny from above; and a scheme of reporting by virtue of which automatic and as far as possible informal accountability is the order of the day.

This paper may be regarded, according to the author, as an informal interim report by the chairman of the American Accounting Association's committee on social accounting, or as some prefer to call it, national income accounting or national economic accounting. During its first year the committee has been able to reach a wholly united opinion on what its name or its program should be, but it did welcome as one the action by the executive committee that it be established as a permanent committee. Whatever its future field of interest, the committee has been convinced that, to start with, a period of self-education was essential to a rational consideration of the problems that have beset economists and others who have lately specialized in this field. Fascinating techniques suggesting themselves in the course of evolving national-income components and data-building processes generally, together with deep concern over inescapable imperfections in both available material and existing methods of compilation, have served effectually to preoccupy researchers and block consideration of the interpretations put by others on their final product.

In the June, 1947, issue of the "Journal of Accountancy," appeared an article entitled "TVA's first audit by General Accounting Office (GAO) points way to businesslike evaluation." The article starts out with an editorial comment stating failure of TVA . . . to provide "yard-sticks" to measure private corporate operation; or, to be capable of being evaluated as going businesses, springs from lack of facts. General Accounting Office has made a commercial-type audit of Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), plus recommendations, which show how TVA may be made comparable to commercial operation. . . failure to charge property taxes, depreciation, interest, and other expenses makes business men feel that government corporations, like TVA, cannot be considered commercial enterprises. The business man's objection grows out of the belief that government should not set up privileged competition with him, using his own money, and giving this competition the added advantages of freedom from taxes, interest, and other charges.

In this article the author comments on a series of three articles entitled "Power Price Fixing," written by James L. Dohr, which were published in earlier issues of "Journal of Accountancy," as of January 1946. The articles discuss at some length the U.S. Federal Power Commission's decisions and those of the Montana and Arkansas utility commissions on the accounting practices of Montana Power Co. and Arkansas Power & Light Co. Each year the Federal Power Commission has published in a single volume the financial statements of the principal privately owned electric utilities of the U.S. An epitome of these statements was published for the year 1943 which brought out the striking changes that had taken place in the industry since January 1937, the date when the Uniform System of Accounts became effective. In the broad areas embraced by financial and business controls, accounting principles and policies have played a role that has increased greatly in importance during the past ten years. Accounting has become firmly entrenched as the language of business and of businessmen. Total assets, gross volume, net income are among the many terms that accountants have been able to keep within the confines of their art.

A war period, without doubt, is a poor time for observing and raising questions concerning expenditure controls in the Federal government. I have made no attempt to indicate the controls surrounding the procurement of the materials of war or even of peacetime supplies and equipment, which are subjects by themselves, and time has not permitted bringing out details of expenditure procedures. Nevertheless, sufficient general ground may have been covered to warrant a number of conclusions in which accountants should be interested.

The article focuses on a symposium on various accounting principles underlying corporate financial statement. Those who have been charged with responsibility for activities of the American Accounting Association and its predecessor during the last 15 years frequently have occasion to recall the annual meeting held six years ago. For nearly ten years various members had proposed a restatement of aims and purposes of the association: a broadening of its expressed scope to cover the range of activities in which it seemed actually to be engaging and a more direct participation in practical affairs where national associations up to that date had seemed to be devices for the protection and defense of members, rather than mediums for the clarification and expansion of their fields of endeavor. Among other things, the devising of unequivocal statements of professional principles and policies had been suggested as a major project, notwithstanding that the normal interests of the association had been variously described as belonging to the realm of theory, pure science and academic narrowness.

The article focuses on theories and practices of accounting. For two decades, accounting processes of the Federal government have drifted along without leadership and with no central guiding principle. Papers, which appeared in the March 1940 issue of journal, The Accounting Review, amply indicated the dissatisfaction of those who have carefully investigated existing practices. There are many persons familiar with Federal accounting to whom the idea of following the commercial pattern is somewhat repugnant. Government is organized for service, not for profit. But costs are the same everywhere and government stands to gain if the well-developed notions of cost accountants can be adapted to the Federal picture. The balance sheet of a Federal department, commission, or other agency need not differ from that of a private corporation, except for the net worth section; yet a number of Federal establishments cannot produce a balance sheet, notwithstanding their ownership and use of various sorts of assets.