The Financial Accounting Standards Board has agreed to delay a specific presentation requirement in a recent new accounting rule on comprehensive income while it studies reports of implementation problems.

FASB is not deferring the effective date for the entire contents of Accounting Standards Update No. 2011-05, Comprehensive Income (Topic 220): Presentation of Comprehensive Income, but it has proposed a deferral on the presentation requirements specified in the standard with respect to reclassifications. The standard requires companies to display items that are reclassified out of accumulated other comprehensive income to net income alongside their respective components of net income and OCI. FASB is proposing to defer that requirement after preparers reported the presentation requirement is more unwieldy than they anticipated.

OCI represents gains or losses that have not yet been realized, such as a gain in a security that is being held as an investment. When companies mark up or down the value of such investments each reporting period, they show the gain or loss in OCI, which is a component of equity. FASB wanted to give greater prominence to OCI and changes that flow to earnings by requiring companies to display OCI in the earning statement or in a statement immediately following.

Companies know how to reclassify such items to transfer them from equity to earnings, but the presentation required in the new standard has caused some implementation problems. Preparers have told FASB that some reclassification adjustments don't readily transfer to a single line item in net income, and companies may not have captured information in a way that lends itself to such presentation.

FASB says under its proposal companies would still display OCI in the current income statement or in a statement immediately following the earnings statement. However, they would not be required to follow the original requirements for how and where reclassification adjustments are presented. Instead, they would report reclassification adjustment out of OCI according to presentation requirements in effect before ASU 2011-05.

The comprehensive income standard takes effect for annual or interim periods beginning after Dec. 15, 2011. FASB is accepting comments on the deferral through Nov. 23.