FASB News
Golden Outlines Process for Setting Rulemaking Agenda
FASB’s process for putting a topic on its standards-setting agenda is one that entails making tough decisions from the outset to manage the pace of accounting changes early, according to remarks by FASB Chairman Russell Golden in FASB’s quarterly report. Golden said the board selects agenda topics based on whether there is an identifiable and sufficiently pervasive need to improve GAAP. “In other words, what improvement is needed? And what’s the extent to which it affects users, preparers, auditors, and others,” Golden said in the report, issued February 12. The board also studies whether there are technically feasible solutions and whether the perceived benefits of those solutions are likely to justify the expected costs of change. “This is an important consideration, as we want to make sure we use our time efficiently and effectively on the highest priority projects that we will be able to complete,” Golden said.
Training on New Rules for Continuing Education Providers
FASB plans to hold an online technical training forum on March 16 to help companies and individuals that provide continuing professional education (CPE) better grasp the application of some of its newer standards, including revenue recognition, leases, and credit loss rules. A FASB panel with board and senior staff members will participate in the forum, the board announced. Specifically, FASB member Gary Buesser, Acting Technical Director Shayne Kuhaneck, Assistant Director—Nonpublic Entities Jeffrey Mechanick, and Supervising Project Manager Elizabeth Gagnon will be on the panel. The forum is open to stand-alone CPE providers whose primary business is to provide CPE, as well as to individuals who provide CPE within their own organizations or to their organization’s clients. CPE credit will not be provided for the forum itself. CPE providers will be able to ask the panel about final and proposed accounting standards and thereby get assistance in the preparation of accounting and reporting courses.
IASB News
IASB Seeks Shortened Comment Period for Rate Reform Proposal
Trustees of the IFRS Foundation, the parent organization of the IASB, asked at its most recent meeting to allow the accounting board to shorten its standard comment period process on a rate reform proposal it plans to issue in April. The IASB wants to shorten the comment period from 120 days to 45 days or “no less than 30 days,” according to the Foundation’s February 18–20, 2020, meeting agenda. The proposal would amend IFRS 9, Financial Instruments; IAS 39, Financial Instruments: Recognition and Measurement; and IFRS 7, Financial Instruments: Disclosures, to facilitate the effects of the phaseout of interbank offered rates. The IASB is aiming to finalize the changes after June this year; to achieve that timeline—robust for the IASB—the board needs a shorter public comment period. The board will make the case to its trustees by pointing to the narrowness of the proposed amendments.
