SEC compliance, governance and risk management spending is projected to reach almost $30 billion in 2007, according to a recent survey performed by AMR.

AMR research is predicting that public corporations will spend $6 billion in 2007 to comply with Sarbanes-Oxley (SOX) accounting legislation. Sarbanes-Oxley spending will likely account for about 20 percent of overall compliance costs. On average, a company spends about $4 million a year to comply with section 404, according to surveys by Financial Executives International, a Florham Park, New Jersey-based organization representing 15,000 corporate financial executives.

SOX was passed in 2002 in the wake of corporate accounting scandals at Enron and WorldCom. The legislation included dozens of reforms, but two of the biggest changes required top executives to sign off on financial statements and establishing internal control rules which require costly compliance work and have been blamed for increased audit fees.

U.S. regulators have talked about restructuring some areas of the law to reduce costs, but, according to the survey, companies are not likely to see big savings from the changes.

“Projections were that this would be a long-term systemic change, so it’s not as if you spend and then you’re done,” said John Hagerty, vice president and research fellow at AMR, which has been tracking Sarbanes-Oxley spending since 2003.

Hagerty said he had expected the Sarbanes-Oxley revisions to lower spending this year, but suggested the spending has held steady because small companies — with market capitalizations below $75 million — will have to start complying with some areas of the law for by the end of this year.

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