This report, from The Business Journal of Portland, has a familiar ring:
Three years after businesses adopted the Sarbanes-Oxley Act's accountability standards, the reverberations are being felt on the bottom line.
Proxy statements filed by 20 Oregon public companies showed that audit and tax fees increased by an average of 57 percent. The audit fees, made necessary by the stricter Sarbanes-Oxley rules, comprised the lion's share of the increases.
Similar reports abound: Here, here, here,and here, for example. All of this certainly helps to explain this picture: