Review of IFRS Interpretations Committee activity in 2014

Date recorded:

The agenda paper provided for the meeting offered an overview of the Interpretations Committee’s activities over recent years, highlighting the numbers and types of activities undertaken and how those activities had been evolving.  The Director of Implementation Activities introduced the agenda paper, and asked the Committee members whether they had any questions or comments with respect to the items in the agenda paper.

One Committee member observed that the Committee had dealt with a number of issues over the past year that had arisen from questions about the accounting under standards that have been in place for a long time, for example, IAS 12, IAS 16 and IAS 21.

The Director of Implementation Activities noted that there had been some instances where a few issues had arisen on certain standards, and then further issues had followed soon after, or the Committee had asked the staff to look back at some of the old issues related to that standard to see whether there could be some things that could be looked at collectively, which had encouraged more issues to come in.

The Senior Director, Technical Activities added that this could also have arisen from the source of the submissions and the spread of adoption, noting that new jurisdictions adopting IFRSs could be raising issues on the older standards as they start to apply them for the first time.  He specifically noted that the IAS 24 issue that had been discussed earlier in the meeting had come from a jurisdiction that was currently in the process of adopting IFRSs.  Accordingly, he noted that new adopters could be the issue rather than underlying problems with the standards themselves.

Another Committee member questioned whether the staff had a breakdown of the sources of submissions – i.e. between users, preparers, regulators.

The Director of Implementation Activities responded, and noted that the staff’s default position was to keep the identity of submitters hidden.  He noted that some analysis could be done; however, noted that he had reservations as to the accuracy of the results given that for a number of submissions, the ultimate source of the issue was unknown.  He provided the example that in some jurisdictions the standard setter encouraged discussions amongst various parties, and then the standard setter submitted the issue; however, the actual source of the submission was not necessarily the standard setter.

The Chairman brought the discussion to a close, and encouraged the Committee members to let the staff know if there was any additional information they would like to see in future reports provided by the staff.

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