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Differences Between IFRS And US GAAP

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Major Differences between IFRS and U.S. GAAP
Since 2002, the FASB and International Accounting Standards Board agreed to the convergence of US .GAAP and IFRS. GAAP is usually recognized as a detail oriented accounting guidance, while IFRS is considered to be a more rule-based accounting principle. Sedki (2014) stated Inventory, Revenue Recognition and Consolidated Financial Statements are the major areas considered to be core accounting areas, shares major differences between IFRS and U.S. GAAP and may affect most companies’ financial positions when convert from one to another.
Inventory: IFRS aimed to provide guidance on “the amount of cost to be recognized as an asset and carried forward until the related revenues are recognized.” (IAS 2-1) …show more content…

However, IFRS and GAAP differ in their definition of control. GAAP focuses on controlling power of financial interests by analyzing voting rights; IFRS focuses on the ability for a company to govern the financial and operating policies of an entity to obtain benefit. Under GAAP the parent and subsidiary companies are allowed to have different year-ends up to three months apart; significant events occurring between the reporting dates to be disclosed in financial statements. Under IFRS the financial reports are prepared in the same period for both parent and subsidiaries.
Financial assets (IAS 39/IFRS 9): US GAAP provides extensive guidance throughout various industry-specific standards, however, IFRS has only 2 standards: IFRS 7 and IFRS 9 deal with financial assets. IFRS 9 classifies assets basically based on the nature of the instrument, whereas US GAAP reflects legal form in classification.
Different classifications lead different measurements, which means assets and recognize measurement gains or losses to income statement or equity is different. And these differences can be huge.
Impairment of assets (IAS 36): Testing of impairment under IFRS and US GAAP is different. Whether the asset is impaired or not could due to different

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