The Securities and Exchange Commission issued Release No. 34-58259, Public Company Accounting Oversight Board; Notice of Filing of Proposed Rule on Auditing Standard No. 6, Evaluating Consistency of Financial Statements and Conforming Amendments, on July 31, 2008.

The proposed standard seeks to bring the PCAOB's rule making in line with some recent decisions of the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), including the 2005 issuance of Statement of Financial Accounting Standards (SFAS) No. 154, Accounting Changes and Error Corrections, and an Exposure Draft (ED), The Hierarchy of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. The ED was issued as a final statement in May 2008 in SFAS No. 162.

Comments are due on the proposal 21 days following their publication in the Federal Register, which normally occurs a few days after they are published on the SEC's website.

The PCAOB approved Auditing Standard No. 6 (AS 6), Evaluating Consistency of Financial Statements, at an open meeting in Washington, DC, on January 29.

The proposed AS 6 seeks to update the PCAOB?s interim standards, in part by removing the GAAP hierarchy from them. The PCAOB believes it is no longer necessary to include them because of the FASB?s decision to address the hierarchy in SFAS No. 162.

If approved by the SEC, AS 6 will supersede the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants' (AICPA) AU Section 420, ?Consistency of Application of Generally Accepted Accounting Principles.?