Alas, I have not posted very much of late. But, it's only because I am trying to find as much time as possible to write my book describing a simple, comprehensive and robust basis of accounting that any public company could…
I marvel at how much mere happenstance can play in a career. I might not have become a teacher, or gone to graduate school but for one meeting with an administrator when I was a senior at Cornell. Twenty years…
A long time ago — in 2004, to be exact — the FASB and IASB announced that they would jointly develop a common “conceptual framework.” They divided the work into eight phases. It took them almost seven years to complete the…
My Shareholder Oriented Financial Accounting (S-OFA) Standards will require that debits equal credits. Duh. But if I am truly going to start with a clean sheet of paper, then I am compelled to explain how double-entry accounting serves a purpose. I see three…
I’m starting a company and I want you to invest. I will put up $100 of my money for $10 million of yours. I will own 100 shares of voting stock, and you will own 10 million shares of non-voting…
Last December, I announced that I have started to write a book that would propose a very different basis for financial accounting by public companies. I’m calling it ‘Shareholder-Oriented Financial Accounting’ (S-OFA), and this is the opening paragraph I have in mind:…
It seems there is always good reason to write a post about revenue recognition. I can even envisage an entire blog on the FASB’s new standard (ASC 606). It could go on for years without running out of fresh material. That…
Interperiod tax allocation has been required since the 1950s, soon after Congress permitted tax deductions based on accelerated depreciation of long-lived assets. History indicates that the accounting standard setters who pushed for interperiod tax allocation (ARB 44 and APB 11)…
I hoped that my previous post would make a compelling argument for why a more focused objective for the FASB could lead to standards that would better serve the public interest. Some readers liked it; however, two former policy makers were…
The FASB has been prolific by any measure. The codification of authoritative GAAP alone is almost 8,000 pages for goodness sake. Believe it or not, that’s about twice as wordy as the U.S. Tax Code. “Financial Accounting” versus “Financial Reporting”…