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…
The accounting topic of the season is income taxes. But, as the nation contemplates what Congress could end up passing, I want to talk about how one under-the-radar amendment to financial accounting standards has been quietly adding to the federal…
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…
My latest post was about general problems with asset “impairment” accounting — its absurdity, high cost and dubious information value. And I haven’t even begun to hone in on the wurst part: goodwill impairment. It is somewhat more challenging to think about recognition…
A seasoned accountant and regular reader of my blog wrote that, until my last post, he had seen little discussion of the potential to manage the effective tax rate upwards. He has, however, seen numerous instances where companies have done just…
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 wonder why so little is made of the fact that key technical terms in U.S. financial reporting are misleading perversions of plain English? As a sampling, consider these, which I have written about in postings over the years: “Goodwill” is…
If you subscribe to The Atlantic magazine, the title of this post may ring a bell — a riff on “How American Politics Went Insane: It Didn’t Start with Donald Trump...” from the July/August edition. Now that I have made that acknowledgement, I will…
My previous post addressed three aspects of the auditor’s report: The PCAOB* proposal to require a discussion of “critical audit matters”; Whether use of non-authoritative GAAP should be given special mention by the auditors; and The opinion language that financial statements…
I have been teaching undergraduate “Accounting Theory” for the past three years. For reasons that I will explain below, I choose to begin the course by exploring differences between accrual accounting and cash flows; and relatedly, how to analyze a statement of…