Finance & Accounting Issues

Software Revenue Recognition

Technical Practice Aids
(Microsoft Word document)
Released by the AICPA and developed by their Software Revenue Recognition Task Force.

Stock Option Accounting

Toward Rational Treatment Of Stock Options: The Baby And The Bathwater
(Microsoft Word document) March 7, 2003
Comments on International Accounting Standards Board Exposure Draft 2 (ED-2), Proposal re Stock Options, by W.J. Baumol and B.G. Malkiel
SEC: Disclosure Of Equity Compensation Plan Information
(Microsoft Word document) January 30, 2000
Proposed amendments that would require registrants to disclose information about the total number of securities that have been authorized for issuance under equity compensation plans.

Business Combinations Accounting

Comment Letter to FASB on Accounting for Intangibles and Goodwill
(Microsoft Word document), May 14, 2001
Comment on the February 14, 2001 Exposure Draft entitled: Proposed Statement of Financial Accounting Standards, Business Combinations and Intangible Assets-Accounting for Goodwill. The Exposure Draft proposes to eliminate the pooling method of accounting for business combinations and also to eliminate the requirement that companies amortize goodwill; instead, companies would charge earnings whenever they determined that all or a part of their goodwill became impaired.
Revised Exposure Draft: Business Combinations and Intangible Assets-Accounting for Goodwill
(Adobe Acrobat document) February 14, 2001
This revised Exposure Draft is a limited revision of the 1999 FASB Exposure Draft of a proposed statement, Business Combinations and Intangible Assets. The revised Exposure Draft contains the FASB's tentative decisions requiring use of a nonamortization approach to account for purchased goodwill. Under that approach,goodwill would not be amortized to earnings, as originally proposed. Instead, it would be reviewed for impairment, that is, written down and expensed against earnings only in the periods in which the recorded value of goodwill exceeded its implied fair value.
FASB: Business Combinations and Intangible Assets
January 24, 2001
Board reconfirmed the proposal in the Exposure Draft that would require all business combinations to be accounted for using the purchase method, thus prohibiting use of the pooling-of-interests (pooling) method of accounting for business combinations. (Go to: http://www.rutgers.edu/Accounting/raw/fasb/main.html to read online and link to related documents.)
Letter to Senator Gramm, Chairman, Senate Banking Committee
(Microsoft Word document), February 29, 2000
Comments on Exposure Draft on Business Combinations and Intangible Assets
(Microsoft Word document), January 11, 2000
Letter to Mr. Timothy S. Lucas, Director of Research and Technical Activities, Financial Accounting Standards Board; outlining SoFTEC's oppostion to the FASB proposal to eliminate the pooling method of accounting for business combinations.
Business Combinations and Intangible Assets (Proposed Statement of Financial Accounting Standards)
September 7, 1999
(1) Front Matter, Standards Section, and Appendix A
(2) Appendix Sections B through F
(3) Opinion 16 as Amended by Changes Proposed in the
        "Business Combinations" Exposure Draft
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In-Process R & D Accounting

Audit Committees

International Accounting Standards

Statement by the Board of the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC)
(Adobe Acrobat document)December 2000
This Statement was approved for publication by the Board of the International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) at its meeting in December 2000, in contemplation of the hand-over of its functions to a new Board.