Background

The issue was initially raised with the IFRS Interpretations Committee that had origianally intended to develop an interpretation of IAS 16 Property, Plant and Equipment to deal with it. However, during the course of discussions the Committee concluded that a narrow-scope amendment to IAS 16 would be a better solution.

Suggested changes

ED/2017/4 Property, Plant and Equipment — Proceeds before Intended Use (Proposed amendments to IAS 16) proposes to amend IAS 16 to prohibit deducting from the cost of an item of property, plant and equipment any proceeds from selling items produced while bringing that asset to the location and condition necessary for it to be capable of operating in the manner intended by management. Instead, an entity would recognise the proceeds from selling such items, and the cost of producing those items, in profit or loss.

Effective date

The exposure draft does not contain a proposed effective date which the IASB intends to decide on after the exposure. Nevertheless, the IASB has already concluded that earlier application would be permitted.

Additional information

Please click for:

• IASB press release (link to IASB website)
• Access to the exposure draft on the IASB website
• Our UK Accounting Plus project page on IAS 16 — Proceeds before intended use
• Our related Need to know publication

This publication includes reports from the EFRAG President Jean-Paul Gauzès and the TEG Chairman and CEO Andrew Watchman. It also features contributions on providing thought leadership, improving financial reporting standards, delivering endorsement advice, as well as governance and transparency.

The report is available on the EFRAG website.

Please click through for the notes relating to the following issues:

New issues:

• IFRS 3 — Acquisition of a group of assets
• IAS 38 — Goods required for promotional activities
• IAS 37 — Costs considered in determining whether a contract is onerous
• IAS 8 — Changes in accounting policies
• IAS 28 — Associate or joint venture and common control

Agenda decisions to finalise:

• IAS 41 — Biological assets growing on bearer plants
• IAS 19 — Discount rate
• IAS 33 — Tax arising from payments on participating equity instruments
• IFRS 9 — Clearing broker and centrally cleared client derivatives
• IFRS 9 — Modifications/ exchanges of financial liabilities

Deliberation of comments received:

• Annual Improvements 2015–2017: IAS 23 — Borrowing costs on completed qualifying assets

The preliminary and unofficial notes taken by Deloitte observers for the entire meeting are also available.

The FRC indicates that “the quality of audits of FTSE 350 companies in the UK is improving”.  It highlights that 81% (77% in 2015/16) of FTSE 350 audits reviewed in 2016/17 were categorised as requiring “no more than limited improvements”.  The FRC has set a target that “at least 90% of FTSE 350 audits reviewed should require no more than limited improvements by 2018/19”.  Findings indicate, however that “a higher proportion of audits reviewed outside of the FTSE 350 required more than limited improvements”.  

The reports set out the principal findings arising from the audit quality inspection work carried out by the FRC’s Audit Quality Review (AQR) team for 2016/17. 

The reports focus on the key findings from the reviews, why such findings are important and actions the individual firms are taking to address them in order to safeguard and enhance audit quality.  Key findings address both the FRC’s inspection of individual audits and also each firm’s policies and procedures to support and promote audit quality. 

The reports also identify some examples of good practice which contributed to audit quality at each firm. 

The FRC indicates that it will issue, in July 2017, an overall report on the quality of audit in the UK.  The first report of this type was published in July 2016 with a follow up report in February 2017. 

The press release and links to individual reports are available on the FRC website.

The report makes the following points:

• Traditional paper-based reporting is still perceived by many as the principal form of communication.
• There are increasing demands for a range of information to be provided in corporate reports and companies seem willing to provide it.
• This leads to fears that the traditional reports are becoming too long (information overload) and therefore less useful.

ICAEW suggests that inclusion of digital and technology specialists in reporting discussions could highlight opportunities for companies to use technology in reporting as part of the solution to this problem, which might consist of presenting additional information outside of the annual report, in a digital format that is user-friendly and easy to access.

ICAEW believes that it would important to address these problems as soon as possible as the demand for more access to information is likely to continue to grow. However, ICAEW also notes that there needs to be further research into the implications of digitalisation and that key policy decisions on the issues would need to be taken if real progress is to be made in advancing the quality of corporate reporting.

The full report can be found on the ICAEW website.

The report — prepared by the Chair of the IFRS Advisory Council, Joanna Perry — notes the following discussions:

• Financial stability and the IFRS Foundation — Members of the Council received a presentation from the Secretary General of the Financial Stability Board. The presentation and ensuing discussion related both to a macroeconomic perspective of financial stability and to the key role of financial reporting standards as a foundation of financial stability. Members of Council then considered in breakout groups some key questions around the role of the IFRS Foundation in financial stability. One of the key messages to emerge was that financial stability is a byproduct of financial reporting and not the main objective.
• Wider corporate reporting — The Council advised that it should be acknowledged that wider corporate reporting is becoming more important and that there is a role for the Board in this area although that role is not yet clear. There was broad support and encouragement for the Board to both undertake further research to obtain more information and to work with another body to consider further the role that the Board can play.
• Materiality — Advice on the communications strategy for the Materiality Practice Statement included that the Board should be cognisant of the significant extent to which financial statements are likely to require revision as a result of the practice statement and should consider the communications strategy as a promotion and marketing exercise.

The next meeting of the IFRS Advisory Council is scheduled for 17–18 October 2017, in London. The full report on the council’s April meeting is available on the IASB's website.

There are nine topics on the agenda.

Wednesday 21 June

The meeting begins with Disclosure Initiative: Materiality Practice Statement. The staff are responding to comments received as a result of an external review of the draft practice statement.

The next topic is Accounting Policies and Accounting Estimates, and a recommendation to remove one of the examples in IAS 8.

The Board will continue its discussion of Primary Financial Statements, focusing on approaches for describing capital structure, developing a principles-based approach for EBIT, management-defined performance measures, adjusted earnings per share and presenting the share of equity method profits or losses.

In the afternoon session the Board will look at rate-regulation examples and how the proposed model would apply to them.

The day concludes with Conceptual Framework discussion about limitations on what may constitute a reporting entity in situations when the reporting entity is not a legal entity.

Thursday 22 June

The meeting continues on Thursday morning with IFRS Implementation Issues, including a proposal to provide special transitional arrangements when an entity changes an accounting policy as a consequence of an IFRS Interpretations Committee agenda decision.

The Board will discuss the feedback from the comment letters on the proposed amendment to IFRS 9 on prepayment features with negative compensation, including the likely effective date.

The education sessions on dynamic risk management continue, focusing on a high-level illustration of the dynamic aspect of dynamic risk management.

The meeting concludes with a further discussion of the definition of a business.

More information

Our pre-meeting summaries are available on our June meeting note page and will be supplemented with our popular meeting notes after the meeting.

In line with the majority of other stakeholders, EFRAG had taken a critical view of the proposed amendments. The feedback statement describes the main comments received by EFRAG in response to its draft comment letter and how these comments were considered by EFRAG in finalising its comment letter to the IASB.

Please click to download the feedback statement from the EFRAG website.

Professor Tarca joins the IASB from the University of Western Australia. She served as a member of the Australian Accounting Standards Board (AASB) from 2014 to 2017 and was Research Director for the AASB from February 2017. She was an academic fellow of the IFRS Foundation from 2011 to 2012.

Mr Anderson joins from Janus Henderson Investors in the UK. He was a member of the UK Accounting Standards Board from 2007 to 2013 and a founding member of the Corporate Reporting Users’ Forum (CRUF).

Please click for the announcement on the IASB's website. The Australian standard-setter AASB has also released a statement.

The IASB completed redeliberations of the May 2015 Exposure Drafts in March 2017 and expects to publish the revised Conceptual Framework in the second half of 2017.

Please click to access the decision summary on the IASB website.