The International Accounting Standards Board has proposed changes in the standards for presenting items under other comprehensive income.

Sir David Tweedie

The proposals have been jointly developed with the U.S. Financial Accounting Standards Board, which like the IASB is also seeking public comment on changes to the presentation of OCI as part of its recent financial instruments proposals (see FASB Proposes New Financial Instrument Standards).

The IASB is proposing to require that entities present their profit or loss and other comprehensive income in separate sections of a continuous statement. The IASB is also proposing to group items in OCI on the basis of whether they will eventually be “recycled” into the profit or loss section of the income statement. 

“We have recently published several proposals that broaden the use of other comprehensive income,” said IASB Chairman Sir David Tweedie in a statement. “It is therefore appropriate that this information is presented clearly and in a uniform manner. If adopted, these proposals will result in further convergence of IFRS and U.S. GAAP in an increasingly important part of the financial statements.”

The exposure draft, “Presentation of Items of Other Comprehensive Income (Proposed Amendments to IAS 1),” is open for comment until Sept. 30, 2010.  It can be accessed via the “Comment on a proposal” section on www.iasb.org. For more information on the proposals, visit http://go.iasb.org/OCI-presentation.