Cox defended the 2002 Sarbanes-Oxley Act and resisted efforts to repeal it or scale it back legislatively. The greatest source of complaint about the law during his tenure was its Section 404, which produced compliance expenses far higher than the SEC under his predecessor had predicted. Working with the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board, the SEC under Cox replaced the original auditing standard for Section 404 with a streamlined, more cost-effective version, and also provided new guidance for management intended to reduce unnecessary costs. At Cox's direction the agency undertook a nationwide Small Business Cost-Benefit Study to determine whether, as intended, the new auditing standard and management guidance had made compliance less expensive and better focused the 404 process on control elements that truly matter for companies of all sizes.