How would International Financial Reporting Standards affect the quality of Canadian accounting information?
INTRODUCTION
Globalization has a great impact on today’s economy. The differences of accounting regulations and practices in various countries have become a noteworthy obstacle to globalization and economic development. International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) mitigates global business barriers. In order to adapt to the increasingly global business environment, public companies in Canada will move to IFRS by 2011. This movement will have a significant influence on Canadian business such as capital markets, financial statement preparers, the accounting profession, and even accounting students. Investors are eager to understand the differences between IFRS and Canadian GAAP. The public companies should be ready to follow IFRS in January, 2011. Even private companies should fit their businesses into the new environment. Therefore, most Canadian companies care about what issues IFRS deals with.
In our report, we will only focus on how IFRS affects the four qualitative characteristics of Canadian accounting information—relevance, reliability, comparability and consistency. The discussion will help investors to better understand accounting information. Generally, IFRS and Canadian GAAP have the same objective: providing useful information for decision making. Both of them are principles based and have the same conceptual frameworks. However, there are still some significant changes from Canadian GAAP to IFRS: the implementation of fair value, going concern exposure, revenue recognition, disclosure of “extraordinary items”, costing techniques, and segment reporting. (See Appendix)
This change from IFRS to Canadia...
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The goal of the Codification is to simplify the organization of thousands of authoritative U.S. accounting pronouncements issued by multiple standard-setters. To achieve this goal, the FASB initiated a project to integrate and topically organize all relevant accounting pronouncements issued by the U.S. standard-setters including those of the FASB, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), and the Emerging Issues Task Force (EITF)
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.
We would love for these impacts to always have a positive impact; however the impact can affect a company in a negative manner. “ Researchers Holger Daske, Leuz Hail, Christian Leuz and Rodrigo Verdi examined 3,100 firms in 26 countries mandated to adopt IFRS in “Mandatory IFRS Reporting around the World: Early Evidence on the Economic Consequences”. The study examines the economic effects of IFRS, both early and mandated adoption” (Bolt-Lee). They were able to conclude that a company’s adoption of IFRS creates strong economic benefits in countries with rigid regulation over financial reporting. The article also explains that these benefits include an increase in the stock’s market value, an increase in market liquidity, and a lower cost of capital. Companies with major differences between GAAP and IFRS standards show the greatest benefit when supported by a strong regulatory
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).
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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.
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Schofield (2014) researches the difference between public and private company financial reporting. For instance, a private company has fewer consumers reviewing their financial statements, whereas public companies could have multiple consumers reviewing financial statements. In addition, private companies typically have less specialized accounting personnel, whereas public companies will have several. Lastly, Schofield (2014), reviewed the number of amendments proposed and finalized to help benefit private companies financial reporting.
According to the conceptual framework, the potential users of financial statements are investors, creditors, suppliers, employees, customers, governments and agencies, and the general public (Financial Accounting Standards Board, 2006). The primary users are investors, creditors, and those who advise them. It goes on to define the criteria that make up each potential user, as well as, the limitations of financial reporting. The FASB explicitly states that financial reporting is “but one source of information needed by those who make investment, credit, and similar resource allocation decisions. Users also need to consider pertinent information from other sources, and be aware of the characteristics and limitations of the information in them” (Financial Accounting Standards Board, 2006). With this in mind, it is still particularly difficult to determine whom the financials should be catered towards and what level of prudence is necessary for quality judgment.
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.
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