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AASB ED 159: Proposed amendments to accounting standards

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The Australian Accounting Standards Board (AASB) released ED 159 "Proposed Improvements to Accounting Standards", which proposes to amend 27 Australian Accounting Standards. ED 159 incorporates the IASB's ED "Proposed Improvements to International Financial Reporting Standards", which was released in October 2007 under its inaugural annual improvement project.  
 
All proposals are published in a single exposure draft, which serves to streamline the standard-setting process. This removes the confusion associated with the issuing of several piecemeal changes. 
 
The proposals include:

  • Restructuring - to purge IFRS 1 (First-time Adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards) of redundant transitional provisions 
  • Changes of wording - to clarify meaning 
  • Removal of unintended inconsistencies between IFRSs
While the Institute supports in principle the IASB annual improvements process in dealing with necessary minor amendments to accounting standards, some reservations were expressed in the Institute submission about the contents of ED 159. The Institute was concerned that ED 159 included many unnecessary minor amendments to accounting standards which will result in frustration and confusion of our members in business and smaller practices. The Institute also commented that they did not consider that minor amendments should be made in areas where the IASB members did not all agree on the suggested proposal to resolve the identified issue. We consider that the existence of dissenting views amongst the board members implies that the intended amendment is not as minor as one might suspect. 
 
The AASB plans to discuss the proposed amendments at its December 2007 meeting and to prepare a submission to the IASB by 11 January 2008.  
 
View the Institute final submission here. 
 
This information is current up to 5 December 2007