Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) exist to make financial reporting consistent while reducing fraud and material errors. Because GAAP guidance is crucial for public and private companies depend heavily upon it to make financial decisions. Through GAAP, the entity understands how to properly carry out the accrual accounting process and most importantly when to recognize revenue. However, what happens when GAAP guidance is not sufficient or non-existent in its interpretations of gray areas? Here lies the question that accountants and the crypto-currency community of bitcoin has requested answers too for the last few years. After the release of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax …show more content…
Most entities do not have the technological capability to keep track of up to date bitcoin market prices at the time of bitcoin exchange. Providers such as BitPay or Coinbase have effectively made it easy to account for bitcoin by immediately transforming bitcoin into a legal unit of currency. For this reason, the business that accepts bitcoin are transferring bitcoin to a third party and the third party is transferring legal tender. Traditional accounting systems can then classify and record the transaction. Due to bitcoins nature and the legality of it the IRS has classified it as property and not currency for U.S. federal tax purposes. General tax principles that relate to property transactions apply to transactions using bitcoin and other virtual currencies. The IRS states virtual currency has an equivalent value in real currency, or that it acts as a convertible virtual currency (AICPA 2014). Bitcoin is a legal, financial investment and legal for trade and exchange into United States Dollars (USD) under IRS guidance. When receiving bitcoins as payment the coins are computed to gross income by using the fair market value of the virtual currency on that date. Gains or losses are classified as ordinary income or loss depending on whether the virtual currency is a capital asset in the hands of the taxpayer. A payment made using virtual currency is subject
In deciding how to account for an unusual or unique transaction for financial reporting purposes, should one consider the tax treatment applied to the transaction?
Wages paid with cryptocurrency are subject to the same tax withholding regulations as any other form of currency.
However, this Statement maintains the scope of Interpretation 46(R) with the previous additional entities treated as special qualifying entities for purposes. The concept of these entities was eliminated in Statement No. 166. Therefore, the statement No. 167 also superseded the risks of quantitative-based and calculation of rewards to determine which enterprise, if any, provided a financial interest that controls an entity variable interest because the expectation of an access of the basic qualitative will be more efficient to identify which company has a financial interest of controlling in an entity variable interest. However, this is the way the FASB admitted to upgrade the financial reporting standards. Other additional necessity is an additional review event when deciding whether a company is a variable entity interest when there are any occurring circumstances and changes in facts. For instinct, the owner of the equity investment at risk, as a group, lose the power from voting rights to direct the activities of the entity that some characteristic impacts the economic entity’s performance. There will also be ongoing assessments of whether an enterprise is the key beneficiary of a variable interest entity.
Interest income received by a cash basis taxpayer is generally reported in the tax year it is received.
The Internal Revenue Service (IRS) reminds taxpayers to follow appropriate guidelines when determining whether an activity is engaged in for profit, such as a business or investment activity, or is engaged in as a hobby.
4. Interest income received by a cash basis taxpayer is generally reported in the tax year it is received.
In 1973, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) was created and their mission is “to establish and improve standards of financial accounting and reporting for the guidance and education of the public, including issuers, auditors, and users of financial information.” (FASB.org, 2009a). The FASB is a private, not-for-profit organization whose primary purpose is to develop generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) within the United States. The Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) designated the FASB as the organization responsible for setting accounting standards for public companies in the U.S. Therefore, the FASB plays a vital and important role in protecting the financial well being and the overall stability of our
The FASB process includes five steps to develop generally accepted accounting principles. The first step involves meeting and issuing a discussion memorandum. “A discussion memorandum is a document intended to encourage discussion and debate amongst accounting and financial professionals in regards to a current issue relating to the accounting industry” (“Discussion Memorandum”, n.d.). These are the ideas that will harm or benefit accountants. Next, they will obtain responses to this memorandum. After this is done FASB will create an exposure draft. Exposure drafts are basically an open blog about the new changes FASB is trying to implement. “The FASB issues a variety of different types of exposure documents to solicit input on its standards-setting
The IRS (Internal Revenue Service) is the government that handles the collection of individual taxes and tax related concerns in the US. The IRS urges its people to perform their obligation in paying their taxes on a regular basis by permitting them to pay in instalments. An overlooked payment leads to penalty and a few interest of approximately 8-10% yearly to taxpayers.
GAAP is an international convention of good accounting practices. It is based on the following core principles. In certain instances particular types of accountants that deviate from these principles can be held liable.
1099 A – reports on acquisition or abandonment of secured property, such as property sold at a foreclosure sale.
Current requirements of IFRS and US GAAP are different and often lead the recognition of similar transaction different economically, thereby, make it difficult for users to understand and compare revenue. The IFRS revenue recognition is diversity in practice since it contained limited guidance for a range of significant topics, for example, accounting for contract with multiple elements should be accounted as one overall obligation (BDO, 2014). US GAAP in oppose, have many revenue recognition standards with very detail guidance (FASB, 2014). It contains about 100 separate documents and protocols about revenue recognition (Sylva. M, 2014), but conceptually it is inconsistence with each other, thereby, different judgments have been made for different standard and result in inconsistence revenue recognition outcomes.
If a company earns net income of $25 million in Year 8, has 10 million shares of stock, pays a dividend of $1.00 per share, and has annual interest costs of $10 million, then | |
Revenue recognition is a difficult matter in accounting. The company’s results differ depending of the method used to recognized earnings. This is a complex situation since business activities are broad and intricate. Therefore, policies and regulations are imperative to reduce manipulation of financial statements.
The Financial Accounting Standards Board has issued for public comment two Exposure Drafts related to its disclosure framework project. The first exposure draft proposes amendments to Statement of Financial Accounting Concepts - Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting, Chapter 3 – Qualitative Characteristics of Useful Financial Information. The purpose of this proposed amendment is to clarify the concept of “materiality”. FASB defines materiality as, information is material if omitting it or misstating it could influence decisions that users make on the basis of the financial information of a specific reporting entity. In other words, materiality is an entity-specific aspect of relevance based on the nature or magnitude or both of the items to which the information relates in the context of an individual entity’s financial report. Consequently, the Board cannot specify a uniform quantitative threshold for materiality or predetermine what could be material in a particular situation.