Second comprehensive review of the IFRS for SMEs

Background

On 9 July 2009, the IASB had issued the International Financial Reporting Standard for Small and Medium-Sized Entities (IFRS for SMEs). This standard was meant to provide simplifications to the requirements in full IFRSs that reflect the needs of users of SMEs' financial statements and cost-benefit considerations. Compared with full IFRSs, it is less complex in that topics with no relevance to SMEs are omitted, policy choices are reduced, requirements in full IFRSs are simplified and disclosures are reduced.

In order to balance keeping the requirements of the IFRS for SMEs broadly in sync with those in full IFRSs on the one hand and reducing the burden stemming from regular changes to the literature on the other, the IASB had decided that the IFRS for SMEs should be subject to a review approximately once every three years. The Board had also decided that not necessarily all changes made to full IFRSs during that period would be copied to the IFRS for SMEs; rather, a change in full IFRSs would cause the Board to consider whether (and, if so, how) the current version should be amended.

The IASB took up a first review of the IFRS for SMEs in 2012, resulting in the May 2015 amendments to the IFRS for SMEs, which became effective 1 January 2017. A second review was taken up in 2019 to identify whether and, if so, how the IFRS for SMEs should be updated to take account of IFRSs and amendments not currently incorporated into the IFRS for SMEs.

In September 2022, the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) published the exposure draft of a third edition of the IFRS for SMEs accounting standard. For this exposure draft, the IASB had considered alignment with full IFRS Accounting Standards that are effective on or before 1 January 2020. Nevertheless, during the redeliberation of the proposals in the exposure draft, the IASB also looked at all amendments to full IFRSs with an effective date after 1 January 2020 to see whether any of these would warrant inclusion in the final amendments.

At its meeting in October 2023, the IASB decided to include the amendments to full IFRSs for supplier finance arrangements and lack of exchangeability. As these amendments had not been part of the original exposure draft and as the IASB wanted the public to be able to comment on these amendments before including them in the third edition of the IFRS for SMEs, the IASB decided to develop an addendum to the original exposure draft that would be exposed for public comment prior to finalising the amendments.

 

Current status of the project

An exposure draft of a proposed third edition of the standard was published on 8 September 2022 with comment requested by 7 March 2023. An addendum to the exposure draft was published on 28 March 2024 with comments requested by 31 July 2024.

 

Project milestones

Date Development Comments
February 2019 Project first discussed by the IASB
28 January 2020 Request for Information (RFI) Comprehensive Review of the IFRS for SMEs Standard published Comments requested by 27 October 2020
8 September 2022 IASB/ED/2022/1 Third edition of the IFRS for SMEs Accounting Standard published Comments requested by 7 March 2023
October 2023 IASB decides to include two more amendments to full IFRSs in the exposure draft An addendum to the original exposure draft will be exposed for public comment
28 March 2024 IASB/ED/2024/2 Addendum to the Exposure Draft 'Third edition of the IFRS for SMEsAccounting Standard' published Comments requested by 31 July 2024

 

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