All Accounting & Auditing articles – Page 108
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Blog
FASB Jettisons Extraordinary Items From Financial Statements
In its quest to simplify accounting standards, the Financial Accounting Standards Board has adopted a new provision in Generally Accepted Accounting Principles that spares companies the requirement to display extraordinary and unusual items in financial statements. FASB said stakeholders had expressed concerns that companies often faced uncertainty over when to ...
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Article
XBRL Filing Frustrations Tilting Toward Resolution
Image: Good news for companies weary of the unfulfilled promises around publishing financial data using XBRL: Events are looming that promise either to halt the march toward XBRL compliance or finally shove its usage forward. “XBRL is not working,” says Hudson Hollister of the Data Transparency Coalition. “Instead of getting ...
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Blog
Public Companies Could Win Same Exception Given to Privates on Intangible Assets
FASB is taking a fresh look at a method to account for intangible assets it just permitted for private companies, to see whether the rule should be granted to public companies as well. The new method allows private companies to bypass the current GAAP requirement to recognize separately from goodwill ...
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Blog
XBRL Repeal for Small Companies Fails
This week the House of Representatives looked for a two-thirds majority vote to push through a proposal to exempt companies with revenues below $250 million from the XBRL filing requirement. The measure fell short, gaining just 276 votes out of the needed 281. More inside.
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Blog
Final 2013 Going-Concern Filings Expected to Decline
Audit firms’ going-concern warnings dropped again in 2013, for the sixth year in a row, according to a recent study from Audit Analytics. A review of opinions on 2013 financial results (issued throughout the course of 2014) indicates a drop of 5.9 percent from warnings for 2012. More study details ...
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Blog
Missing XBRL, Late Filings, and Worse
Jan. 7—Enthusiasts of XBRL technology, including the SEC, like to talk about its potential as a tool to make financial information easier to use. That future remains unclear. Here and now, however, errors in XBRL filings might be serving a more practical purpose: They can indicate other financial reporting problems ...
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Article
Recognize the Big Standards’ Changes
The auditing and financial reporting world will spend lots of 2015 preparing for the new revenue recognition standard going into effect by 2017—but from leasing to going concern warnings to IFRS adoption in the United States, plenty of other major changes may arrive as well. “Folks have come to see ...
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Blog
SEC Staffers Try to Untangle Business Unit Accounting Issues
Image: Title: RogersAt a recent national accounting conference on regulatory issues, staff members at the Securities and Exchange Commission, including professional accounting fellow Chris Rogers (left), offered lots of advice on how companies can better explain to investors the intricacies of joint ventures, spinoffs, pushdown accounting, and segment reporting in ...
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Blog
SEC Relaxes View on Goodwill Impairment Test Date
Staff members at the SEC are easing up their expectation on preferability letters when companies decide to change the date of their annual goodwill impairment testing. Acknowledging the judgment that goes into making such a determination, staff members will no longer request a preferability letter to be obtained and filed, ...
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Blog
Debt Modification May Lead to Hedge Accounting Questions
Dec. 29—A friendly reminder from the SEC and auditing experts: If your company plans to issue or modify debt now, before the Fed raises interest rates sometime in 2015, check your debt agreements carefully to see whether you have any embedded derivatives language in there—since that could trigger new disclosures ...
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Blog
SEC: Don’t Ignore Mortality Tables at Year-End
If your company is planning to set aside new mortality tables in arriving at assumptions about pension and other post-employment benefit obligations because they are simply too new, that might be a mistake. The SEC recently sent a clear signal to the accounting profession that companies need to consider new ...
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Article
SEC Nudges Companies on Cash Flows
The SEC is urging companies to tighten accounting procedures around the statement of cash flows, amid a steady rise in restatements associated with it. Speaking at the national AICPA conference earlier this month, SEC staffer Kirk Crews said the majority of errors were “due to relatively less complex applications” of ...
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Blog
The Ingredients for Good Non-Financial Reporting
Good disclosure begins with good standards. That has been challenging enough for financial reporting, and now investors want even more disclosure about important non-financial information. This week, Compliance Week columnist Robert Herz talks about the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board (disclosure: he sits on SASB’s board), its effort to develop disclosure ...
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Blog
Sustainability Standards for Services Industries Released
The Sustainability Accounting Standards Board issued its latest set of standards, this time for companies in the services sector to help them improve disclosure of environmental, social, and governance risks. The standards represent the sixth set in a planned industry-focused series of sustainability standards. More details inside.
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Blog
FASB Releases XBRL Taxonomy for 2015
For companies looking to get a head start on their XBRL filings, the Financial Accounting Standards Board has released its 2015 GAAP Financial Reporting Taxonomy, pending approval by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
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Blog
PCAOB Disciplines Grant Thornton Auditor in Japan
The Public Company Accounting Oversight Board has disciplined a Grant Thornton auditor in Japan for failing to address numerous red flags that revenue could be overstated in the 2010 audit of Baldwin-Japan Ltd.
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Blog
SEC Cautions Companies on Consolidation Analyses
Image: The Securities and Exchange Commission is looking closely at who consolidates a variable interest entity, noticing variations in how companies apply existing guidance. Professional Accounting Fellow Christopher Rogers said at a recent conference that staff is looking into issues surrounding the application of shared power, determining when a decision ...
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Article
Roundtable Biographies - 120314
On Dec. 3, Compliance Week and LRN presented an editorial roundtable at the Four Seasons Hotel in Washington, D.C. The focus of the roundtable was on measuring program effectiveness. Attendees’ full biographies are below.Karen BerthaChief Ethics & Compliance OfficerMCR Karen Bertha serves as the chief ethics and compliance officer of ...
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Article
More Hints on Putting New COSO to Work
It’s official: The SEC will not roast companies over an open flame if they continue to use the old COSO framework for internal controls into 2015. That said, SEC staffers also warned at the annual AICPA conference last week that their largesse will not last long, and a bevy of ...
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Resource
The Power of Perception: Employees' Views on U.S. Corporate Tax & Accounting Strategies
U.S. corporations aren’t strangers to having their internal operations in the public spotlight. Throughout 2014, a notable amount of attention has been paid to organizations’ plans to pursue a mix of questionable tax strategies, in hopes of lowering their effective tax rate. Tactics from inversions to double Irish arrangements have ...