IFRS and US GAAP, with Website: A Comprehensive Comparison

INTRODUCTION

Much has been made of the convergence of IFRS and US GAAP. In every corner of the country, from Washington to Wall Street, from boardrooms to business schools, the past decade has produced a deluge of information that has inundated the media, trade publications, seminars, and CPE courses with opinions of every shape, form, and point of view. This is not a bad thing. The adoption of IFRS from the tried-and-true US GAAP is both an important and formidable task. Information, debate, and education are essential to this decision.

This book has an accompanying Web site, www.wiley.com/go/shamrockifrsgaap, that contains Excel spreadsheets that illustrate some of the concepts in the book and provide templates for modeling your own organization’s IFRS/US GAAP differences.

However, one could say that adopting IFRS will be less of a decision and more of a process. In 2008, the Gross Domestic Product of countries using IFRS exceeded those that do not, by hundreds of billions of dollars. This includes the United States. Moreover, the ubiquity of IFRS (used or slated to be used in over 117 countries) indicates a near future where providers of capital will insist on receiving financial information using IFRS. Why? Markets dislike uncertainty—uncertainty comes with incomparability. When the volume of business that capital providers do for clients that use IFRS exceeds that of US GAAP, capitalism will dictate standardization in the qualification for financing as a cost-saving measure. ...