NZ accountants part of project to examine IFRS

Friday 25th March 2011

The New Zealand Institute of Chartered Accountants (NZICA) is working with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Scotland (ICAS) on a project to reduce disclosure requirements in International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS).

The International Accounting Standards Board has asked the two institutes to review disclosure requirements in existing IFRS and recommend deletions and changes.

The research comes at a time of concern about the volume and usefulness of financial information investors have to digest. The risk is that readers are being blinded by so many numbers that the important main messages are lost.

The project is being led by an oversight group jointly chaired by Isobel Sharp, partner at Deloitte LLP and ICAS past president, and Tony Frankham, professional company director and NZICA past president.

It is intended that the results of the project will be delivered to the IASB by the end of June.

"My sense is that this review is very timely," Frankham said.

Frankham was among a group of New Zealand company directors who last year protested that a "quirk" in international accounting rules wiped more than $1 billion of profits from New Zealand company accounts for liabilities that did not exist in any real sense.

The quirk arose the accounting treatment of the Government's decision to eliminate tax deductions for depreciation on buildings with an expected life of 50 years.

NZPA

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