The interviews will assist the PTF in gather practical insights on good practices from stakeholders. This information will used in a draft report on climate-related reporting which is expected to be issued during the fourth quarter of 2019. The interviews are expected to last between 45 minutes to one hour; but could be longer depending on the whether a group format or workshop occurs. Those interested in participating should contact the European Lab by 17 September 2019.

For more information, see the press release on the EFRAG’s Web site.

IBOR Reform: The staff will summarise the feedback from comment letters and discuss additional issues for consideration before finalising the proposed amendments. The IASB plans to hold an additional meeting in late August to discuss the project.

Classification of Liabilities as Current or Non-current: The Board will consider liabilities with equity-settlement features as well as transition and early application requirements.

Primary Financial Statements: The Board will discuss potential amendments to IAS 34, whether to include special provisions for management performance measures and subtotals that are similar to gross profit, how to classify interest and dividends in the statement of cash flows and how earnings per share should reflect management performance measures. The staff are also asking for permission to begin preparing the Exposure Draft.

Goodwill and Impairment: The staff are asking permission to begin preparing the Exposure Draft.

Rate-regulated Activities: The Board will consider whether to have an exception in IFRS 3 for rate-regulated activities. They will also discuss the regulatory agreement period and incentive schemes. The staff are recommending that the Board publish an Exposure Draft, rather than a second Discussion Paper, and are seeking permission to prepare that ED.  

Disclosure Initiative: The Board will consider possible changes to the disclosure requirements in IAS 19.

Dynamic Risk Management: The staff will demonstrate how the DRM model is designed to operate. The Board will consider some operational simplifications, whether it should be mandatory or optional and the areas of focus for disclosure.  

Financial Instruments with Characteristics of Equity—Summary of feedback: The Board will continue to discuss feedback on the Discussion Paper, focusing on presentation of financial liabilities; presentation of equity instruments and disclosure; contractual terms; users of financial statements and the overall objective, scope and challenges.

Comprehensive review of the IFRS for SMEs Standard: The Board plans to issue a Request for Information (RFI) in the second half of 2019. At this meeting the Board will consider whether to propose changes to the IFRS for SMEs Standard to reflect IFRS 3, IFRS 10, IFRS 11 and IFRS 15 as well as a range of amendments to IFRS Standards and IFRIC Interpretations that have been published since the last review.

Management Commentary: The Board will consider how to apply the Conceptual Framework’s qualitative characteristics to information presented in management commentary as well as how to make relevance and materiality judgements.

Business Combinations under Common Control: The staff will present their analysis of the implications of potential equity investors in BCUCC and the measurement approaches could be applied. It is an education session with no staff recommendations.

Implementation Matters: The Board will be asked for any feedback on the June meeting of the IFRS Interpretations Committee.  

Joint session with the US Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB): The middle day of the IASB meeting has been set aside for a joint meeting with the FASB. The boards will update each other on projects each Board is working on separately: Segments (FASB); Primary Financial Statements (IASB); Financial Performance Reporting (FASB); Financial Instruments with Characteristics of Equity (IASB); Distinguishing Liabilities from Equity (FASB); IBOR reform (both); Goodwill and Impairment (IASB); Identifiable Intangible Assets and Subsequent Accounting for Goodwill (FASB); Disclosure Initiative (IASB); Disclosure Framework (FASB); and Implementation: Revenue and Leases (FASB).

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

The consultation documents proposes three future project topics and seeks views on their prioritisation:

• Reporting of social matters and human rights
• Reporting of non-financial risks and opportunities, and linkage to the business model
• Reporting on the materiality assessment process and outcomes for Environment, Social and Governance (ESG) matters

The document also asks for any possible alternative project that respondents believe would be more important and urgent for the European Lab to undertake than the projects proposed.

Please click for more information on the EFRAG website. To get additional stakeholder input, EFRAG will also be hosting a two-hour lunch event on Tuesday 10 September. Please click for more information and the full programme for the event on the EFRAG website. 

In addition to giving updates on their respective standard-setting activities at the meeting, the two boards exchanged views on the IASB’s current project on proposed amendments to IFRS 17 and on rate-regulated activities. In addition, the AcSB and the OIC discussed implementation activities regarding IFRS 16 Leases.

For more information about the meeting, see the press release on the OIC website.

Background

The IFRS Interpretations Committee received a submission about IAS 12 Income Taxes and the recognition of deferred tax in relation to leases (when a lessee recognises an asset and a liability at the lease commencement) and decommissioning obligations (when an entity recognises a liability and includes the decommissioning costs in the cost of the item of of property, plant and equipment). The submitted fact pattern assumed that lease payments and decommissioning costs were deductible for tax purposes when paid and identified different approaches in practice.

The Committee discussed the submission at its meetings in March 2018 and June 2018 and came to the conclusion that the matter was relevant and widespread, as there are various kinds of contracts and fact patterns affected. Moreover, the question as to whether tax deductions are attributable to a contract, a (single) asset/liability, or rather to cash flows, and as to which consequences this may have for determining temporary differences, is fundamental within IAS 12. Therefore, the Committee recommended that the IASB develop clarifying amendments to IAS 12.

The IASB discussed the issue in October 2018 (general discussion of the issue and agreement with the IFRS Interpretations Committee's recommendation) and January 2019 (transition, retrospective application, and early application) and has now published an exposure draft of proposed clarifying amendments.

Suggested changes

The main change proposed in ED/2019/5 Deferred Tax related to Assets and Liabilities arising from a Single Transaction (Proposed amendments to IAS 12) is a proposed exemption from the initial recognition exemption provided in IAS 12.15(b) and IAS 12.24. Accordingly, the initial recognition exemption would not apply to transactions in which both deductible and taxable temporary differences arise on initial recognition that result in the recognition of deferred tax assets and liabilities of the same amount. This is also explained in the newly inserted paragraph IAS 12.22A.

Comments on the proposed changes are requested by 14 November 2019.

Effective date and transition

The exposure draft does not contain a proposed effective date as the IASB intends to decide on this after exposure. The proposed amendments would be applied retrospectively in accordance with IAS 8 and early adoption would be permitted.

For practical and cost reasons, some simplification is provided for the assessment of the probability that a taxable profit will be available against which the deductible temporary difference can be utilised. A similar simplification is proposed for first-time adopters.

Additional information

Please click for:

• IASB press release (link to IASB website)
• Access to the exposure draft on the IASB website
• Short In brief overview of the proposed amendments (link to IASB website)
• IFRS in Focus Newsletter explaining the proposed amendments
• Our IAS Plus Project page on IAS 12 — Deferred tax related to assets and liabilities arising from a single transaction

The European national enforcers of financial information monitor and review financial statements published by issuers with securities traded on a regulated European market and who prepare their financial statements in accordance with International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and consider whether they comply with IFRS and other applicable reporting requirements, including relevant national law.

ESMA has developed a confidential database of enforcement decisions taken by individual European enforcers as a source of information to foster appropriate application of IFRS.

The publication of enforcement decisions is designed to inform market participants about which accounting treatments European national enforcers may consider as complying with IFRS, i.e. whether the treatments are considered as being within the accepted range of those permitted by IFRS. ESMA considers the publication of the decisions, together with the rationale behind them, will contribute to a consistent application of IFRS in the European Union.

Topics covered in the latest batch of extracts, covering the period from December 2016 to December 2018, include:

Click for access to the full report (link to ESMA website). The ESMA has also published an updated overview of all enforcement decisions ever published.

The statement provides issuers, auditors and audit committees with information related to two areas that European enforcers often challenge. These areas are:

• “The probability that future taxable profits will be available against which unused tax losses and unused tax credits can be utilised (paragraph 34 of IAS 12), assessed through the criteria provided by paragraph 36 of IAS 12;”
• “The ‘convincing other evidence’ that sufficient taxable profit will be available against which the unused tax losses or unused tax credits can be utilised by the issuer (paragraph 35 of IAS 12), in cases where the issuer has a history of recent losses.”

For more information, see the press release on the ESMA website.

The exposure draft addresses concerns and implementation challenges that were identified after IFRS 17 'Insurance Contracts' was published in 2017.

EFRAG is broadly supportive of the changes proposed; however, it has identified possible considerations for the IASB related to the (1) retrospective application of risk mitigation option on transition, (2) issuance of amendments to IFRS 4 which extends the optional deferral of IFRS 9 to allow adequate time for endorsement in Europe, (3) an exception for annual cohorts requirement for certain contracts, and (4) implementation challenges on the restrict use of the modified retrospective approach.

Comments on EFRAG's draft comment letter are requested by 2 September 2019. In addition, EFRAG is inviting users to express their views on the draft comment letter in a 30-minute interview; those interested in participating should contact EFRAG by 16 August 2019. For more in­for­ma­tion, see the press release and the draft comment letter on EFRAG website.

Ten of the sixteen members of EFRAG TEG will reach the end of their current term of ap­point­ment on 31 March 2020 and one of the country liaison members will reach the end of their current term on 31 October 2019. While all members are eligible for reap­point­ment, EFRAG welcomes all ap­pli­ca­tions and in par­tic­u­lar seeks can­di­dates from central and eastern Europe and other countries not yet represented on the EFRAG TEG.

For more information, see the press release on the EFRAG’s website.

ED/2019/1 was published on 3 May 2019 with comments requested by 17 June 2019. Agenda papers for the meeting will be available in due course on the IASB website.