Seventy-one percent of U.S. CFOs and senior comptrollers surveyed by Grant Thornton believe that the Financial Accounting Standards Board should set U.S. accounting standards, instead of the International Accounting Standards Board, the Securities and Exchange Commission or Congress.
Only 24 percent of the 846 executives polled at public and private companies said an international independent board such as the IASB should set standards. Twenty percent said the accounting profession, through an organization such as the International Federation of Accountants, should set them. Sixteen percent said a national regulator such as the SEC should set standards, while 3 percent said they should be set by national legislatures such as Congress.
While Extensible Business Reporting Language usage has picked upincreasing to 17 percent in September from 12 percent in March among public company survey respondents 52 percent of those respondents said they have no plans to use it.
The increase is not significant, given the SEC mandate that public companies begin using XBRL as of this past June and no later than 2011. When asked if they would use XBRL by then, 18 percent of public company executives stated they plan to use it after 2011.
In other survey findings, 59 percent of all respondents reported their companies would continue to use leases more or less the same way they currently do, even though FASB has tentatively decided that all lease obligations should be recognized as liabilities on the statement of financial position with a corresponding right of use asset.
Forty-three percent of CFOs also feel that companies should report their own debt on their financial statements at amortized historical cost, rather than at fair value (38 percent) or at the discounted amount of the expected future payments (18 percent).
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