The Financial Accounting Standards Board may delay the effective date for some requirements related to new rules that are meant to give greater visibility to other comprehensive income in corporate financial statements.

FASB Chairman Leslie Seidman has opened a project to study whether the board should defer certain provisions in Accounting Standards Update No. 2011-05, Comprehensive Income (Topic 220): Presentation of Comprehensive Income, which was finalized and published in June. The standard is meant to give the OCI line item greater prominence in financial statements by eliminating an option to present components of OCI in the statement of changes in stockholders' equity. The amendment requires that companies display all non-owner changes in stockholders' equity either in a single continuous statement of comprehensive income or in separate but consecutive statements of net income and OCI.

The requirements are slated to take effect for public companies for annual and interim periods beginning after Dec. 15. That means calendar-year companies must implement the requirements with their 2011 year-end financial statements. FASB says it has heard from preparers recently that they may not have enough time to implement one specific provision of the new requirements—that is, to develop a separate presentation on the face of the financial statements for items reclassified from other comprehensive income to net income. FASB says stakeholders have raised concerns about the level of detail that could be involved in meeting that particular requirement.

In a recent alert to clients, PwC advised companies to look carefully at that specific provision and get an early start. “Complying with this requirement may not be so straightforward for companies with reclassification adjustments that affect multiple line items,” PwC wrote. It cited pension-related adjustments as a specific example of reclassification adjustments that could be troublesome. “Suffice it to say that it's worth moving this one up on the to-do-list, instead of waiting until the last minute,” PwC advised.

FASB wrote the new OCI standard to prepare financial statements for bigger changes that are coming as a result of its current efforts to rewrite rules related to financial instruments. “The board agreed to increase the prominence of items reported in other comprehensive income, which will grow as a result of a number of other projects currently in process at FASB,” said board member Larry Smith in a summer podcast to explain the new rules.

FASB says it will discuss the reclassification concern at a future board meeting to determine whether to delay the effective date for that specific requirement. It has assigned a one-hour time slot to its Oct. 21 meeting agenda to address the issue.