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Before the Codification, accounting standards lacked a consistent and logical structure. For the last 50 years, U.S. GAAP consisted of thousands of standards with multiple standard setters. The old U.S. GAAP were difficult to interpret, and the complexity of the standards made it hard for users to stay up to date.
In 2006, the FASB began working with the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) to reduce or eliminate the differences between U.S. GAAP and the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), known as the IASB-FASB convergence project. [15] The scope of the overall IASB-FASB convergence project has evolved over time.
] U.S. accounting firms are opposed to convergence because of the familiarity of GAAP, the unfamiliarity with international accounting principles, and other countries' accounting systems. U.S. firms and other CPAs have been reluctant to adapt and learn a new accounting system, and believe that IFRS lacks guidance compared to the GAAP.
Firms often maintain at least three sets of accounting books during the normal course of business. Firms in the United States usually maintain a GAAP-compliant set of financial books which are reported to investors and the United States Securities and Exchange Commission (US SEC) in the event the firm is publicly traded; an internal (non-GAAP) set of managerial books; and a set of fiscal (tax ...
In 2002 IASB and the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), the body supporting US GAAP, announced a programme known as the Norwalk Agreement that aimed at eliminating differences between IFRS and US GAAP. [12]
The notable limitations of accounting standards are their inflexibility, time-consuming process to create them, the difficulty of choosing between alternative treatments and their restrictive scope. [3] Accounting standards were largely written in the early 21st century.
As a result, the computation of the tax expense is considerably more complex. Tax law may provide for different treatment (from GAAP) of items of income and expenses as a result of tax policy. The differences may be of permanent or temporary nature. Permanent items are in the form of non taxable income and non taxable expenses.
In the United States, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) is working with the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) to reduce or eliminate the differences between United States Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (US GAAP) and the IFRS, [1] in particular according to the convergence programme laid out by a 2006 ...