FASB News
Regulatory Framework Will Determine Next Steps on Digital Assets
FASB will be able to comprehensively address the reporting of digital assets once there are more regulatory guardrails in place, board Vice Chair James Kroeker said at an advisory meeting. His remarks were in response a question posed by a council member about the board’s take on the topic. “I think you’ve heard folks talk about maybe digital assets meet today’s definition of a security and of course if they do we have very clear guidance on accounting for securities,” Kroeker said during December 2 Financial Accounting Standards Advisory (FASAC) discussions. “And so as some of those regulatory regimes begin to take place it certainly makes it easier to identify what the asset is for accounting proposes and how to put a framework around that,” he said. “It probably makes the determining of value a little bit easier as well if there’s some more centralization and controls around trading and who the counterparties are.”
FASB Member Cautions More Stringent Focus on Investor Demands
On December 2, FASB member Gary Buesser cautioned board advisers to pin their input more closely to the information investors clamor about the financial performance of a company, stating too many objections were being raised by the panel on the issue. “I think when we get into a lot of the objections a lot of you are raising—‘competitive harm, income statement allocations, is this decision useful information, one size doesn’t fit all’—you know I’ve heard that over and over again,” he said during December 2 Financial Accounting Standards Advisory Council (FASAC) discussions. “And what I’m looking for is a way forward to provide more decision useful information to users—that’s what our mission statement is and that’s what our objective should be.” Buesser, one of two investor voices on the seven-member FASB, said he was frustrated by what he heard from the FASAC, the board’s main advisory body. The council comprises 35 senior financial reporting professionals some of the nation’s largest companies and organizations. “We can talk until we’re blue in the face about what we can’t do, but we all know we can do better than what’s available today and it’s a matter of how we do that. And if we keep raising objections all the time, we get nowhere,” he said. ”And it’s time to move forward and actually do what investors are asking us to do in a measured way that balances benefits and costs.”
IASB News
Feedback Sought on Technology Updates for IFRS Taxonomy 2021.
Extensible Business Reporting Language (XBRL) software developers can now weigh in on proposed technology features for the IFRS Taxonomy 2021, the IFRS Foundation said on December 2. The taxonomy is a classifying system in XBRL that allows companies to precisely label the thousands of pieces of financial data that are included in typical long-form financial statements and related footnote disclosures. The tags allow computers to automatically search for and assemble data so those data can be readily accessed and analyzed by investors. The proposed technology changes would affect the way in which the taxonomy can be implemented by its users, according to the proposal. It would refine the IFRS Taxonomy’s “technology,” meaning taxonomy features including, “the syntax employed to publish and express the content of the IFRS Taxonomy, and the taxonomy architecture used.” The architecture relates to taxonomy characteristics, such as how the IFRS Taxonomy content is organized into files and naming protocols. Specifically, the document is primarily intended to inform and seek feedback from developers and maintainers of XBRL software (such as XBRL processors, report creators or review and consumption tools) about changes that may affect such software. Comments are due by January 3, 2022.
