Congressman Garett introduces legislation to exempt small businesses from compliance with Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002

Congressman Scott Garrett (Republican from New Jersey) has introduced legislation on October 8, 2009 to permanently exempt small businesses (non-accelerated filers) from the reporting requirements of Section 404(b) of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002. His press release is available here.

Congressman Garrett’s website also contains lots of useful information in evaluating this issue and his proposed amendment. This information includes:

• the text of the current regulations (available here)
• the highlighted portions of the regulations that the bill intends to change (available here)
• the SEC study of Section 404 (available here)

It will be interesting to follow Congressman Garrett’s legislation in these current economic times since compliance with Section 404(b) can be very expensive.