GASB considers restructuring accounting literature

The Governmental Accounting Standards Board is proposing to overhaul the structure for providing guidance on U.S. GAAP for state and local governments, unifying it in a way that's similar to its sister organization, the Financial Accounting Standards Board.

On Monday, GASB circulated a discussion memorandum and asked for comments on the proposal. The memo, The Structure for Communicating Generally Accepted Accounting Principles for State and Local Governments, is a staff document aimed at seeking feedback at a relatively early stage, before GASB reaches a consensus view. The proposal is part of GASB's pre-agenda research on the topic and doesn't yet present any preliminary views of the board, However, it will contribute to GASB's considerations of whether it should add a project to its technical agenda on moving to a single-authority structure similar to FASB's Accounting Standards Codification.

The main goal of the pre-agenda research is to evaluate the effectiveness of GASB's existing dual-authority structure, in which GAAP resides in two places: Original Pronouncements, such as GASB Statements or Implementation Guides, and the Codification. Both of them now have equal authoritative status. and GASB wants to consider whether to pursue a single-authority structure like FASB's Accounting Standards Codification and, if so, how it would be operationalized.

As part of the feedback on other GASB due process documents, GASB's stakeholders have brought up the issue of the dual-authority structure with some of them suggesting that GASB should move to a single source of GAAP, similar to the FASB Accounting Standards Codification. As more standards are issued and as GASB re-examines and amends its existing standards, using and maintaining a dual-authority structure becomes more difficult.

GASB has already done some research on this area, and the previous phase of GASB's pre-agenda research focused on evaluating the dual-authority structure, specifically with respect to how stakeholders engage with GASB literature and how the structure is maintained. Based on the results of that research, in the current phase it's exploring whether a single-authority structure should be pursued and what that potential structure could look like.

The research isn't expected to lead to a project that would change the existing accounting and financial reporting requirements. The focus instead will be on considering how GAAP is communicated and maintained.

GASB is asking its stakeholders to review the document and provide input by Aug. 31, 2026. Comments can be emailed to the director of research and technical activities at director@gasb.org or submitted through an electronic input form.