If you assumed that accounting standards wouldn’t get sucked into the highly charged health care debate, you guessed wrong! From the New York Times

An association representing 300 large corporations urged President Obama and Congress on Monday to repeal a provision of the health care overhaul that prompted AT&T, Caterpillar and other companies to announce substantial charges for the current quarter….

AT&T announced last week that it was taking a $1 billion charge because of the provision. Deere & Company announced a $150 million charge, Caterpillar a $100 million charge, and 3M a $90 million charge.

Many companies said they were taking these charges now, before the current quarter ended, to comply with accounting rules. But some corporate critics asserted that the companies’ rapid response to the health legislation was aimed at pressing the administration to repeal the provision….

Henry A. Waxman, a California Democrat who is chairman of the House Energy and Commerce Committee, criticized the charges by the companies, asserting that the health reform would save companies more money than it cost them.

Mr. Waxman sent AT&T, Caterpillar and Deere a sharp letter, questioning the charges and saying he wanted top officials from those companies to testify at an April 21 hearing he has scheduled on the issue.

Mr. Waxman and Bart Stupak, a Michigan Democrat who is chairman of the House Commerce Committee’s subcommittee on oversight and investigations, wrote to AT&T’s chairman, Randall L. Stephenson, “The new law is designed to expand coverage and bring down costs, so your assertions are a matter of concern.”

Their letter said AT&T’s moves “appear to conflict with independent analyses,” including a finding by the Business Roundtable, an association of chief executives, that health care reform would reduce insurance cost trends for businesses by more than $3,000 for each employee over the next 10 years.

Responding to such criticism, Mr. Klein said: “These announcements are required under accounting rules, and we should all expect more of such announcements in coming days and weeks. We’re very troubled that these announcements have been challenged by officials in Obama administration and Congress.”

The fuss is driven by the complexities of financial reporting for tax liabilities and changes in the law, a topic that UT Austin’s Lillian Mills has been studying in details for some time.  She will be discussing why the signing of the law generated such large charge-offs, and more generally discussing her research on how financial reporting interact with tax and other tax laws.

She will also talk about her research on FIN48, her experiences conducting policy-oriented research as one of the handful of accountants with access to IRS data (a nice parallel to FASRI), and the extent to which tax law and financial reporting standards are “coupled.”  Coupling of financial reporting standards and bank regulation has been a very hot topic at FASRI, so the parallels and contrasts should be interesting.

Join us at 4pm ET, Tuesday April 6th, in Second Life or on the web.  See you there!

* UPDATE: You can watch the archived video of this Round Table event here.