Question

International Standards have been described as “principles-based” while U.S. GAAP is typically described as “rules-based.” Take a look at the IFRS’ interpretation of “significant influence” and FASB’s definition-compare and contrast the two-how similar are they- where are the differences?

Feel free to browse through the FASB Codification for more details on this.

Answer 1

International Accounting Standard 28 (IAS 28) Investment in Associates has been issued by the International Accounting Standards Board describes an associate as the entity on which an investor has significant influence. Significant influence as per the definition provided in the standard, i.e. IAS 28, is the ability to exercise significant control over the operating and financial decision making process of an organization or an investee. However that does not mean to control or jointly control the operations of the organisation or the investee.               

FASB on the other hand makes it compulsory that there must be investment in a certain proportion of shares in an organization in order to establish existence of significant control. Thus, investor must have a certain percentage of shareholding in an organization to exercise significant control over the operating and financial decision making process of the investee.

Thus, from the above it is clear that though both IFRS and FASB have given equal importance of participation in the decision making process of the investee but whereas IFRS have highlighted the importance of actual existence of significant control FASB have focused on portion of shareholding in the investee. Thus, to prove the existence of significant control over the operations of an organization FASB mainly relies on the percentage of shareholding of the investor in the investee whereas this is not exactly the case in case IFRS.