2015 South Carolina Code of Laws
Title 40 - Professions and Occupations
CHAPTER 2 - ACCOUNTANTS
Section 40-2-190. Disclosure of information communicated by client; ownership of statements, records, and working papers created by licensee; furnishing copies of working papers to clients.

(A) Except by permission of the client for whom a licensee performs services or the heirs, successors, or personal representatives of a client, a licensee under this chapter must not voluntarily disclose information communicated by the client relating to and in connection with services rendered. This information is confidential. However, nothing in this chapter may be construed to prohibit the disclosure of information requiring disclosure by the standards of the public accounting profession in reporting on the examination of financial statements or to prohibit disclosures in court proceedings, investigations or proceedings under this chapter, in ethical investigations conducted by private professional organizations, in the course of peer reviews, in performing services for that client on a need to know basis by other active persons of the organization, or in the business of persons in the entity needing this information for the sole purpose of assuring quality control.

(B) Subject to the provisions of this section, all statements, records, schedules, working papers, and memoranda created by a licensee or on behalf of a registrant, incident to, or in the course of, rendering services to a client except the reports submitted by the licensee to the client and except for records that are part of the client's records, are and remain the property of the licensee in the absence of an expressed agreement between the licensee and the client to the contrary. No statement, record, schedule, working paper, or memorandum may be sold, transferred, or bequeathed without the consent of the client or the client's personal representative or assignee, to anyone other than one or more surviving partners, stockholders, members or new partners, new stockholders, or new members of the registrant, or any combined or merged firm or successor in interest to the licensee. Nothing in this section may be construed to prohibit temporary transfer of work papers or other material necessary in the course of carrying out peer reviews or as otherwise interfering with the disclosure of information pursuant to this section.

(C) A licensee shall furnish to a client or former client, upon request and reasonable notice:

(1) a copy of the licensee's working papers, to the extent that the working papers include records that would ordinarily constitute part of the client's records and are not otherwise available to the client; and

(2) accounting or other records belonging to, or obtained from or on behalf of, the client that the licensee removed from the client's premises or received for the client's account; the licensee may make and retain copies of these documents of the client when based on work completed by the licensee.

(D) Nothing in this section requires a licensee to keep paper work beyond the period prescribed in any other applicable law.

HISTORY: 1996 Act No. 453, Section 1; 1998 Act No. 325, Section 3; 2000 Act No. 274, Section 3; 2001 Act No. 92, Section 1; 2004 Act No. 289, Section 1.