The International Accounting Standards Board has published an exposure draft of a slimmed-down handbook outlining its international financial reporting standard for small and midsized companies.
The overhaul of the standards is the result of a three-year project. The new 320-page version was written in plain English where possible, and drafted in response to complaints that the IASB’s full rule book, which weights in at more than 2,500 pages, was too complex.
The draft removes choices for accounting treatments, eliminates topics that are not generally relevant to small and midsized businesses and simplifies methods for recognition and measurement. It is, ostensibly, a bid to woo small companies and emerging markets to the IFRSs, which were developed primarily for listed companies.
The IASB proposes that listed companies, however small, would not be eligible to use the simplified version.
The exposure draft, “International Financial Reporting Standard for Small and Medium-sized Entities” will soon be available at the board’s Web site,
