Auditing And Accounting Standards Board

If, in the auditor's judgment, management has not adequately addressed the effects of estimation uncertainty on the accounting estimates that give rise to significant risks, the auditor shall, if considered necessary, develop a range with which to evaluate the reasonableness of the accounting estimate.

To enhance a user’s ability to understand and compare an entity’s operating results, reporting entities are required to describe all significant accounting policies in their financial statements. As such to decide if an accounting principal is significant, is the management’s decision.

The Sarbanes-Oxley Act created the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) to assume the responsibility of overseeing the auditors of public companies. The PCAOB is a private-sector, non-profit corporation. It was established to "protect the interests of investors and further the public interests in the preparation of informative, fair, and independent audit reports". (The PCAOB) Although the PCAOB is a private sector organization, it has many government-like regulatory functions. The PCAOB was created in response to an increasing number of accounting restatements by public companies during the 1990s and a series of recent high-profile scandals like Enron and WorldCom. Prior to the PCAOB, the audit industry was self-regulated

The most important thing to any company’s stakeholders is high-quality reporting of its financial statements. Investors, for instance, need to know the truth about a company in order to make an informed decision on whether to make private investment, buy stock or bonds. However, for stakeholders to get the truth about a company, they need to read and understand management’s discussion and analysis, the president’s letter, the notes, as well as the financial statements. Conversely, financial statements must be accompanied with disclosures to prevent them from misleading the stakeholders.

This standard outlines the presentation of financial statements for general purpose financial statements, in order to ensure that there is compariablity between the entities reporting periods as well as between other industries reports. The standard discusses the minimum requirement for reporting content and guidelines for the structure in which it is to be set at. Paragraph 117-124 distiguishes the disclosure of accounting policies in relation to judgement. Management’s judgement made in applying accounting policies that may have effected significant amounts found in financial statements and the financial position. Seen in paragraph 125-133 ‘Sources Of Estimation Uncertainty’, it is vital that entities disclose the key assumptions made regarding future prospects and other uncertain estimates that are used in identifying carrying amounts of assets and liabilities. Along side this, the nature and carrying amount must be disclosed at the reporting date.

PThe Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) has the authorization and duty to inspect auditing firms to make sure they are in compliance with law, rules, and professional standards in connection with the auditing reports of public companies. Some deficiencies noted by the PCAOB in the inspection reports of Deloitte & Touche LLP, KPMG, BDO LLP, and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP are discussed in the following paper.

One topic that has generated much discussion and even some “bad blood” in the accounting profession and business community as a whole is variable interest entities, formerly known as “special purpose entities.” One common definition of a variable interest entity is a legal business structure which does not have enough capital to support itself due to its lack of equity investors. The financial support for the variable interest entity is provided by an outside source, such as another corporation. A variable interest entity is often created by a corporation to serve as a holding company, which will hold assets or debt for the creating corporation. A corporation can use such a vehicle to finance an investment

GAAP is a very important concept in regards to financial statements. GAAP provides a uniform means of evaluating company performance. GAAP also provides clear metrics in which all publically traded companies must follow. These standards are designed to help protect society, investors, and stakeholders for fraudulent activities that may endanger the well being of society. Although GAAP has been met with extreme criticism of late, it does help abate the influence of fraudulent activity on the part of corporations. More importantly, GAAP is flexible in regards to its standards. The rules and procedures for reporting under GAAP are complex and have developed over an extended timeframe. Currently there are more than 150 "pronouncements" as to how to account for different types of transactions, ranging from how to report regular income from the sale of goods, and its related inventory values, to accounting for stock bonuses. This flexibility combined with standard proceeds helps to maintain the integrity of financial statements. This allows investors and other stakeholders to evaluate companies in a similar manner irrespective of size. A company with $2 billion in annual revenue can be evaluated in a similar manner to that of a company earning $500,000.

The national Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) came together and jointly issued a newer revenue recognition standards. This will change the effects of the current revenue guided under US GAAP and IFRS. It will take not much of the time to be used as the date is set to have effects from 2017. All of the firms had to work under the rules and regulations set. There is enough of the time left to understand and work on the changes. On dated 28th May, 2014 the new revenue standards were issued for contracts with customers. It has the power to give limitations and new rules are to be followed by various industries. It also includes those industries which have their own policies

it must determine the appropriate financial statement presentation and disclosure of the results. Sometimes financial statement preparers do not give the same level of attention

Variable Interest Entities—An entity that does not have sufficient equity to finance its activities without additional financial support, or in which the equity investors, as a group, do not have the characteristics of a controlling financial interest is a VIE. The determination as to whether an entity qualifies as a VIE depends on the facts and circumstances surrounding each entity and may require significant judgment. Our investment funds generally qualify as VIEs and are evaluated for consolidation under the VIE model.

Identifiable intangible assets with finite lives are carried at cost less accumulated amortization and adjusted for

According to the International Accounting Standard Board, IAS 11 provides for accounting of revenues and costs pertaining to a construction contract. Revenues from a construction contract are only recognized when the contract is complete. However, there is another possibility whereby a proportion of net income is recognized over the period of the contract which is also known as the percentage of completion method. Contract revenues usually comprise of the initial revenue as agreed in the contract and variations in contract work, claims and incentive payments. In addition, IAS 11 consists of two types of contracts which are fixed price and cost plus contracts. Fixed price contracts are contracts whereby a fixed contract price is accepted by

(a)On 1 January 2005,all the stock exchange listed companies in Europe adopted the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) written by the international Accounting Standards Boards. According to IASB, the setting body of IFRS, their primary objective is to develop a set of high quality, transparent ,understandable, global accepted financial standards in the public interest (IFRS 2015) . Furthermore, the statement made by European Commission also explained the benefits including the elimination of barriers to international trades, the increasing of transparency and comparability of company accounts, the improvement of comprehensive strength and the rapid promotion of economic growth (Commission 2002). Based on the public

According to Delloite (http://www.iasplus.com/en/resources/ifrsf/due-process/background-to-ifrs)”The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) is an independent non-profit organization that develops and approves International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRSs)”. In mainly usage, the term 'International Financial Reporting Standards ' (IFRSs) has both a narrow and a broad meaning. Firstly, IFRSs refers to the new numbered series of pronouncements that the IASB is issuing, as distinct from the International Accounting Standards (IASs) series issued by its predecessor. More broadly, IFRSs refers to the entire body of IASB pronouncements, including standards and interpretations approved by the IASB and IASs and SIC at 2001 interpretations approved by the predecessor International Accounting Standards Committee.” The IASB has all responsibilities for the technical matters of the IFRS Foundation. The objective of financial reporting is the foundation of the conceptual framework. Other aspects of the framework - qualitative characteristics, elements of financial statements, recognition and measurement - will build on that foundation with the aim of ensuring that financial reporting achieves its objective. The goal of IFRS as said at (source) is”to develop a set of high quality, understandable, enforceable and globally accepted financial reporting standards based upon clearly articulated principles”. To surmount these difficulties and still connect accounting to