XBRL: are we missing something?

Is XBRL the future of financial reporting asks Tom Selling in the title of a recent post on his Accounting Onion website, immediately answering his own question with an exuberant “YES!” Here’s part of his argument: “..the FASB should take it as a given that XBRL will be a game changer for accounting standards. For…

Let’s bring down the IFRS Foundation! (you go first…)

“IFRS could be stripped of accountancy watchdog role”, says the title of a recent article in the UK Telegraph newspaper. According to the writer, Louise Armitstead, the IFRS Foundation “has been severely criticized by MEPs (Members of the European Parliament) for poor governance structures, a lack of transparency and its ‘close links to the accounting…

IFRIC 21, or: I wasn’t elected to be perfect…

Although financial reporting has brought a miraculous amount of clarity and structure to the world, it’s also responsible for a colossal volume of wasted time…. A recent manifestation of this is IFRIC Interpretation 21 Levies, effective for annual periods beginning on or after January 1, 2014. IFRIC 21 was driven by requests for guidance on…

IFRS 14 – another gap closes, sort of

The IASB has issued IFRS 14 Regulatory Deferral Accounts, effective for annual periods beginning on or after January 1, 2016. For those who aren’t familiar with the area, IFRS 14 brings into IFRS for the first time a practice long-established elsewhere, that entities subject to rate-regulation (power suppliers and suchlike) can justify recognizing assets and…

Gross misconduct!

Issues arising in determining whether to recognize revenue on a gross or net basis Here’s an extract from the Alberta Securities Commission’s recent Corporate Finance Disclosure Report, issued in December 2013: “IAS 18, paragraph 8 states that revenue includes only the gross inflows of economic benefits received and receivable by the entity on its own…

Clarifying share-based payments (to a degree)

The IASB’s recent Annual Improvements includes some important changes to IFRS 2 For my money, IFRS 2 Share-based payment is one of the more poorly expressed standards, in that it does a weak job of laying out its core principles, and all but encourages a reader to get lost in definitions and complexities, without really…

Master speaker!

Observations on a recent address by IASB Chair Hans Hoogervorst I’m sure Hans Hoogervorst is a capable Chair of the IASB in most respects, but his speeches – at least as published on the website – are consistently awful. A recent example delivered in Tokyo, titled “Defining Profit or Loss and OCI… can it be…