Us Ifrs Adoption

Defining Issues

November 2007 No. 07-34 ,

KPMG LLP

®

How the IFRS Movement Will Affect Financial Reporting in the U.S.

The SEC’s concept release on the potential use of IFRS by domestic public companies and the movement in favor of a single set of global standards raise the prospect that U.S. public companies will one day be required to file IFRS financial statements.1 With capital markets becoming less and less bound by political borders, a single set of high-quality, globallyaccepted accounting standards has the potential to improve financial-statement comparability among companies regardless of their domicile. This edition of Defining Issues analyzes the major forces that make an IFRS filing requirement in the U.S. more likely and what a transition to an IFRS-only regime would look like and mean for U.S. companies.

The IFRS Movement Worldwide

IFRS are already transnational to a degree no set of accounting standards has ever been, and the movement toward IFRS abroad affects the way regulators, standard setters, and other members of the U.S. financial-reporting community evaluate the potential use of IFRS here. The IFRS Movement Worldwide The IFRS Movement in the U.S. Challenges to Achieving the Goal Challenges to Adopting IFRS in the U.S. The SEC’s Role in a Transition to IFRS Adoption Timeline Transition Disclosures Convergence Industry Guidance Nonpublic Entities

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Over 100 countries either require or allow the use of IFRS or a variant for financial reporting by listed companies, and some of those countries allow the use of IFRS for local regulatory or statutory...