Financial Reporting Essay

In 1973 the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) was established to set the financial accounting standards in the United States of America for nongovernmental entities. These standards are collectively called U.S. Generally accepted Accounting Principles, or U.S. GAAP. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants acknowledge the authority of these standards (FASB, n.d). A “proven, independent due process” is used to collect the viewpoints of the financial statements prepares and users for the constant improvement of these standards. An Accounting Status Update(ASU) is not an authoritative source however documents the amendments to communicate the changes in the FASB Codification for a user to understand the reason and future of those changes (FASB, n.d).

1. This question addresses the effect of Microsoft’s software capitalization policy on its financial statements. Ignore any potential tax effects.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board goes through an elaborate information gathering process before issuing their standards. Firstly, an issue is identified and placed on the Board 's agenda by the Emerging Issues Task Force. Secondly, a task force of knowledgeable persons is appointed to advise the Board on the issue. Thirdly, the Board 's technical staff investigates the issue. Fourthly, a discussion memorandum on the issue is then written and distributed to interested parties. Fifthly, the

The original Accounting Standards Codification Topic 205 (ASC 205) Presentation of Financial Statements is comprised of four Subtopics: Overall, Discontinued Operations, Liquidation Basis of Accounting, and Going Concern. Below is a summary of each Subtopic.

Accounting has been playing a very important role in many places such as Australian accounting standards. Australian accounting standards is also developed by the Australian Accounting Standards Board (AASB). This essay will firstly discuss what AASB is, the role and the functions of AASB. And then, following this, the other projects’ role such as Financial Reporting Council (FRC) and International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and the relationship between AASB, FRC and IASB.

The accounting system we use today started in Venice in renaissance period over 520 years ago. The trade business increased hugely during this time and all the financial recordings had to be written down to help people see how their business is doing. During that time in 1494 the first book about was published in accounting by Luca Paciolli and was called “The Collected Knowledge of Arithmetic, Geometry, Proportion and Proportionality”. He was called “The father of Accounting” and most of his described principles have been used up until this day.

In this composition, we will be discussing two topics that go hand in hand when it is dealt with in tax accounting. To fully understand the scope of this article, passive activity is defined by the IRS as “any rental activity or any business in which the taxpayer gains income but does not materially participate in the activity”(IRS). Examples of passive activities can include equipment leasing and real estate leasing, in contrast to salaries, wages which are generally considered non-passive activities. As the article “Skip the dorm, buy your kid a condo” states, there are tax benefits when renting a property, but now individuals have exploited loopholes in the tax code that can be controversial and even illegal.

The first revenue recognition principles were issued in 1984 when the FASB first issued Statement of financial accounting concepts (SFAC) number five. This statement

Total assets at the end of its most recent annual reporting period? Why is this important?

The management and expense ratio is used to figure out the proportion of the organizations overall expenses that go toward the administration or management expense.

The following report is an analysis of the consolidated accounts for Hallenstein Glasson Holdings Ltd (HLG) based on the 2013 financial statements and the ratio analysis is based on the group account figures. The terms of this report is to firstly, determine the strengths, weaknesses and prospects of HLG and secondly, to determine if the shares are favourably priced?

These assets are both cash and other things that could be changed into cash, and they might be used if necessary to pay their costs of operating. A non-profit organization uses the long-term solvency ratio to find out if they are likely to be able to pay their bills. This ratio will tell the non-profit exactly how much they depend on contributions from other sources outside of their organization. The organization uses the management/expense ratio to tell them how much they should set aside for administrative costs, besides their program costs. If they save too much money in this category, they can spend less money on their programs. The revenue/expense ratio tells them how much funding they have used to support their fund-raising. The revenue/expense ratio is like the management/expense ratio because if too much money goes into revenue/expense, not enough will go to their programs.

Also “in terms of interpretation, the long-term solvency ratio should be at least 1.0 but as a general rule, the higher the ratio the better the organization is doing” (Martin, 2001). The ratio for

1. A brief history of the two organisations, and their objectives, in as far as they

Global accounting standard setter joined hands to work in a coordinated manner to achieve the goal of creation of single set of accounting standards. Thus, IASB and FASB in response to the issues arisen due to the financial crisis started development of new set of standards. They decided to replace IAS 39 by and built and sub divided the project into three phases: