The Financial Accounting Standards Board is seeking public comment on four unrelated Accounting Standards Updates recommended by its Emerging Issues Task Force.

The most significant proposal, says EITF member Jay Hanson, who is national director of accounting for McGladrey & Pullen, seeks to shore up differences in how insurance companies expense and capitalize certain expenses associated with acquiring new insurance contracts. The rules more explicitly explain which costs an insurer is allowed to amortize, or write off over time, and which must be shown as an immediate expense through earnings, says Hanson. The proposal would generally accelerate the recognition of expenses, he says.

While the specific proposal applies to a narrow group of public companies, it reflects a trend in accounting standard setting, says Hanson, one where the obsolete “matching principle” is being written out of U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles. The accounting profession used to operate under the notion that expenses should be matched to revenue, so even upfront costs in establishing a new insurance policy would be spread out over time to match the premium payments received over the life of the policy.

“The matching principle has been out of vogue for about 20 years,” says Hanson. “A cost once incurred is not an asset any more. The money has been spent. We have lots of standards that say you can defer those kinds of costs, but they are getting picked off one at a time. This is a foretaste of things to come, but one standard at a time.”

Hanson says the EITF is not anticipating a favorable reaction. “I’m guessing the fan mail we get on this one from insurance companies is going to be very negative,” he says. The other three proposals represent more minor technical corrections, says Hanson.

One would modify Accounting Standards Codification Topic 310 Receivables to change the way entities would account for the acquisition of troubled loans. The update would amend existing rules to say loans accounted for within a pool would not have to be removed from the pool and accounted for separately, even if part of a troubled debt restructuring.

Existing accounting rules establish detailed criteria for whether a loan modification should be classified as a troubled debt restructuring, and therefore trouble loans should be accounted for individually. FASB says entities have been taking different views on whether troubled loans in a pool should be accounted for as individual assets or as part of a pool, so it is issuing the proposed update to achieve more comparability.

Another proposal would amend Topic 718 Compensation to clarify when a share-based payment award, such as a stock option, should be classified as equity or a liability. Confusion has surfaced about how to classify such awards when the exercise price is set according to some foreign currency, FASB says. The proposed guidance says the currency issue should not be seen as a condition that would compel a liability classification if the award otherwise qualifies as equity.

A final proposal says casinos don’t have to book a liability for a casino base jackpot because it’s possible the jackpot will never be won and the casino will never pay it.

FASB is accepting comments on all four proposals.