Small and Medium-sized Entities (SMEs)

Date recorded:

The staff provided the Board with considerations arising from statutory financial reporting and proposed that the project should develop a simplified version of the current Standards.

The Board expressed concerns as to the Framework under which the proposals would be prepared and stated that the users of these financial statements need to be borne in mind when preparing the proposals.

The Board agreed to continue with a project to develop standards appropriate for SMEs (13-1).

How to tackle the project?

The Board tentatively agreed the following:

  • Development of IASB standards for SMEs should involve an extraction of principles from existing IFRS and Interpretations. The Board agreed to generally maintain recognition and measurement principles but with guidance as to application. However, the Board may decide to amend recognition and measurement when appropriate.
  • Modification of disclosure and presentation principles should be based on the needs of users of SME financial statements.
  • If IASB SME standards do not address a particular accounting question, full IFRS would be a mandatory fallback.
  • IASB SME standards will be published as a separate volume, sequenced in the order of IAS and IFRS numbers.
  • The IASB will decide in the future how IASB SME standards should be labelled.

The Board asked the staff to come back with a 'road map' and an example of an extraction of IAS 19.

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