I just finished an 8 hour CPE course on the IFRS (pronounced I-F-R-S or I-Fers) on Monday. The first thing we learned was that in 5 years, there likely will not be US GAAP standards for US companies to follow. It is just fascinating how much uncertainty this whole IFRS Condorsement/Convergence idea has on companies. The SEC first sets a deadline for announcing whether the US will go with these International Standards by June 2011. Recently, however, there were a couple of kinks in some accounting standards projects between the IASB (International Accounting Standards Board) and the FASB (Financial Accounting Standards Board) that could lead to another delay in the announcement.
The US is currently one of the last few countries that have not yet decided to go with IFRS. Many US companies are on the fence about whether to do early adoption, or to wait until the SEC gives the final go-ahead. Canada (the nation up north and where I am originally from) decided to go live on 01/01/2011. It is so far only for Canadian public companies, but I have no doubt that private firms will shortly be encouraged to follow. The US does quite a bit of business with Canada and other countries who are currently adopting, so I thought this would be an easy decision. Certainly this would be a complete makeover in financial reporting as we know it. However, if we start early in its preparation, I think the outcome would be pretty successful.
Let's just make a decision already and see it through.
