Section 302: |Corporate Responsibility for Financial Reports Enacted in 21332. this section stipulates that a corporation's chief executive ofcer (CEO) and chief financial officer (CEO) must sign off on the accuracy and completeness of the financial statements at each reporting date. Further. these signing officers are held personally responsible for designing; establishing. maintaining and evaluating internal controls at the coiporation. Lastly. this section stipulates that these signing officers are responsible for the disclosure of any fraudulent activity discovered. Ttvhether material in nature or not. to the corporation's board of directors and its external auditors. 3 Section 404: Management Assessment of Internal Controls Although lawmakers did not debate SDX at length. some sections have caused longlasting controversy. In particular. section 4G4 tvas the most controversial because it WES responsible for the majority of the costs businesses have incurred to implement 80):. This section requires management to produce an amiual "internal control report" that contains an assessment of the design and effectiveness of the corporation's internal controls. Further. section 4G4 requires a company's external auditors to provide an opinion on management's internal control report. 4 Section 434 came into effect for large public corporations on November 127.. 23134. Smaller corporations and foreign filers were initially given more time to comply with section 4:314