The International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) added to its work plan a project on discounting (or present value) in 1998. IASC was the predecessor of the International Accounting Standards Board (the IASB). When the IASB came into being in 2001 and took over from IASC, the IASB decided not to continue with the project. In… Continue reading IASC’s project on discounting
Tag: Discounted future cash flows
Saying how likely something is
IFRS standards use too many different terms to describe how likely it is that an event will occur. That is a clear conclusion of KASB Research Report No. 39 / AASB Research Report No. 2 Accounting Judgements on Terms of Likelihood in IFRS: Korea and Australia, issued in 2016 by the Korea Accounting Standards Board… Continue reading Saying how likely something is
Putting the wrong kinds of numbers in P&L won’t help save the planet
Many companies will need to spend a lot of money reshaping their businesses to help save the planet. Some environmental campaigners say that companies should book all that spending as liabilities today. They argue that booking that spending today would make investors focus on that information and that investors would then put pressure on companies… Continue reading Putting the wrong kinds of numbers in P&L won’t help save the planet
Discount rates for very long maturities
A common question about discount rates is how to estimate a discount rate for assets and liabilities with very long maturities. Such a discount rate contains a term premium that cannot be based on evidence and can never be back-tested. As a result, that term premium is not really an estimate, it is just a… Continue reading Discount rates for very long maturities
Measurements based on future cash flows
Paragraph 6.93 of the Conceptual Framework contains a brief high-level discussion of three different central estimates of a set of estimated future cash flows: the expected value (statistical mean) the maximum amount that is more likely than not to occur (similar to statistical median) the most likely outcome (statistical mode) Papers considered by the International… Continue reading Measurements based on future cash flows