Sarbanes-Oxley:  The Act Itself Home  > The Act Contents, Full Text, Summary Want to read the actual text of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (H.R. 3763)? Here's the table of contents online, with links to nicely formatted full text. Need to print out the complete 66-page act, complete with wide margins and funky Congressional formatting? Here it is, in PDF format, from Findlaw. AICPA has provided a nice summary. Key Facts Date Enacted: January 23, 2002. Sponsors: Banking Committee Chairman Paul Sarbanes (D-Md.) and Congressman Michael G. Oxley The vote in the Senate: 97-to-0. Stated purpose: "To protect investors by improving the accuracy and reliability of corporate disclosures made pursuant to the securities laws, and for other purposes." Key Sections SOX-online has collected some of the sections of the act that you might want to read for yourself. They're hardly the only important sections, however, so be sure to at least read over the List of Sections. [Note from Editor: Ms. Sarbox strongly suggests you read the entire act. But then, she would...] Impacts Of course, you'll want to know how much compliance is going to cost. Check out what the press, analysts, and vendors are estimating about the financial impacts of compliance. And take a look at some interesting statistics we've collected. Warning: You won't see consistency in either of these collections. We've chosen not to present some statistics collected by vendors that seemed much too self-serving. But we haven't validated any of this. If some numbers look funny to you, consider reading the complete stories then applying some good old-fashioned critical evaluation of the sources and their information collection techniques.