In the world of international finance there are two major accounting systems; GAAP, which stands for Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, and IFRS, which stands for International Financial Reporting Standards. The United States prefers GAAP while the European market, as well as many other countries, prefers IFRS. By 2015 the Securities Exchange Commission is anticipating a total transfer to IFRS in the United States. Though the differences between GAAP and IFRS are few, they could affect accuracy of financial reporting throughout the world. It is important to understand the differences and similarities between both GAAP and IFRS if one is to globalize ones market (Logue).
What is IFRS, and what is its significance in the world market? In 2001 the International Accounting Standards Board, or IASB, was created to develop a set of standards by which global financial statuses could be reported. According to financialstabilityboard.org, this set of standards, known as the International Financial Reporting Standards, or IFRS, falls under the jurisdiction of the IFRS Foundation, which is a non-profit, private and independently run entity that exists for the public interest, is based on four principle objectives. The first is to develop a single set of international financial reporting standards (IFRS). This set would be high in quality, readily understandable, easily enforceable, and acceptable world-wide. The second objective is to encourage the use of this set of standards in the international business world. Thirdly, the ISAB would like to monitor the needs of different sizes and types of businesses in different settings. The fourth objective is to promote the adoption of the IFRS by converging national accounting standards wit...
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...ue their efforts toward a world-wide set of accounting standards.
Works Cited
GAAP vs IFRS. (2014, April 21). Retrieved from Diffen: http://www.diffen.com/difference/GAAP_vs_IFRS
International Convergence of Accounting Standards Overview. (2014, April 21). Retrieved from FASB: http://www.fasb.org/jsp/FASB/Page/SectionPage&cid=1176156245663 International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS). (2014, April 21). Retrieved from Financial Stability Board: http://finanicialstabilityboard.org/cos/cos_021001a.htm Logue, A. C. (2014, April 21). Comparing U.S. GAAP and IFRS Accounting Systems. Retrieved from Dummies: http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/comparing-us-gaap-and-ifrs-accounting-systems... Nguyen, J. (2010, Febuary 26). Frequently Asked Questions. Retrieved April 21, 2014, from Investopedia:
http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/09/ifrs-gaap.asp
Switching to IFRS will help not just companies but also investors and public globally to compare financial statements. If every country has different financial standards, if would be problematic to compare how each company stands because they are not the same.
The majorities of financial advisers do not have a formal accounting or tax background and thus have some challenges to overcome when reading tax returns of their clients. However they are still asked to help their clients in future planning. Since most accounting is to be done based on compliance with GAAP it would make sense to think that tax accounting should also be done this way, however both the IRS and the courts have stated that compliance with GAAP is of little significance when dealing with the objectives of tax accounting. The objectives of both accounting methods are simply different, because the primary goal of financial accounting is to provide useful information to all stakeholders and the primary goal of the income tax system is the equitable collection of revenue. Because of these differences it can be said that the users of accounting information are different for both methods. The assumption for financial accounting is the going-concern and the tax accounting system ignores this assumption. These differences give us the concept of timing differences and permanent differences. Understanding...
To help accounting professionals easily navigate through 50-plus years of unorganized US generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) and standards the Trustees of the Financial Accounting Foundation approved the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) Accounting Standards Codification (Codification.) By codifying authoritative US GAAP, FASB will provide users with real-time and accurate information in one location. Concurrently, FASB developed the FASB Codification Research System; a web-based system allowing registered users to electronically research accounting issues. Since 2009, the codification became the single source of nongovernmental authoritative GAAP.
Romney, Marshal, and Paul Steinbart. Accounting Information Systmes. 10th ed. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, 2006. 193-195.
Marshall, M.H., McManus, W.W., Viele, V.F. (2003). Accounting: What the Numbers Mean. 6th ed. New York: McGraw-Hill Companies.
This essay will discuss the influence NZ Framework brings to financial reporting standards that included NZ GAAP based on the debate between principles-based and rule-based. In particular, it will portray: (1) the nature and orientation of financial reporting framework and GAAP; (2) the main improvement of NZ Framework and the applications framework guided in NZ GAAP.
Garrison, R. H., Noreen, E. W., & Brewer, P. c. (2010). Managerial Accounting. New York: McGraw Hill/Irwin.
Expanding sales to foreign countries can offer a Multinational Company (MNC) higher profit margins, unique products, and technological advantages. One of the major issues that an MNC will face is analyzing foreign financial statements, due to the diversity of accounting guidelines across the world. It’s imperative that companies that decide to go international learn and understand the tax laws and guidelines of other countries, in order to minimize the accounting issues involved in business activities. One of the top coffee producing companies in the world, Starbucks Corp has grown to be a powerful MNC. Their investment in foreign operations and foreign trade requires them to understand international accounting concepts and international financial reporting standards (IFRS). In this report, GAAP concepts used by Starbuck’s will be compared to IFRS.
Financial accounting is the analysis, classification, and recording of financial transactions and reporting such information to respective users especially external users who use the information to make decisions about their engagements with the entity. In financial accounting general purpose financial statements are used for external reporting. The public by standards imposes the development of the statements through respective national professional bodies, International Accounting Standards Board and respective company Acts for various nations.
References Financial Accounting Standards Board. 2006, July 6 -. Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting. Financial Accounting Series, 1-55. Wolk, H., Dodd, J., & Tearney, M. (2003).
Accounting: From Clay Tablets to the Cloud, How Technology has Changed the Accounting Profession Every business professional knows that accounting is the language of business. The language of business has especially been transformed in the last 38 years due to the almost constant change in technology and technology. Accounting professionals have become the interpreters for the language of business, a language that all business professionals must understand to be successful. in today’s highly competitive market.
The globalization of business has resulted in the need for compatible accounting standards that can be used internationally for financial reporting. As a result, the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) were developed by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) to unify the various financial reporting methods and create a single accounting standard which can be applied to any financial statement worldwide (Byatt). The global standardization of financial reporting will increase the readability and enhance comparability of globally traded companies’ financial statements, without the need of conversion or translation. There are a few main differences between the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and the U.S. Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (U.S GAAP). The increasing recognition and acceptance of the International Financial Reporting Standards by accounting professionals in the United States, will affect the way in which the U.S will record financial statements in the future.
Marshall, D. H., McManus, W. W, & Viele, D. (2002). Accounting: What the Numbers Mean. 5th ed. San Francisco: Irwin/McGraw-Hill.
Growth in international trade has been on the increase over the years necessitating several organizations to be involved in the efforts to harmonize accounting practices either regionally or internationally. Among those, leading in this effort were the European Union (EU) and International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) (formerly International Accounting Standards Committee.
I have applied the IFRS to audit half-year income statement and statement of finical position from domestic sub-company or oversea branches. This allows me to understand the difficultly of dealing with accounting report form different nations. For example, we have to negotiate each report from the U.S. with their reporter by phone. It would take incredibly long time to explain the difference in order to adjust the figures in the reports. During the stuff training, we have been taught that to be professional at everywhere and anytime. Moreover, I realise that the most important feature to be a professional accountancy is responsibility. This is because that a unit of misallocation will cost other team number a huge amount of work to correct it. The experience of taking notes of weekly conferences between senior managers and PWC partner has indicates that how does change in financial policy influence the accounting treatment. For instant, since vice-perminster Mr Le Ke Qiang who visited China Construction Bank at earlier May. He point out that the Rate of Non-Performing Loans could not exceed 7% in the “BIG Four” Chinese bank. This has led Chinese bank to relax its accounting standard of credit rating. It allows me to understand the relationship between government and financial