IPE: MEPs reignite war of words over prudent accounting standards

11 March 2016

Members of the European Parliament’s Committee on Economic and Monetary Affairs have launched a stinging attack on the IFRSs and the IASB. A neutrally worded draft of the now explosive report emerged in January. It hinted that the Parliament had softened the tone of its rhetoric against IFRSs.

Among the proposed amendments to the ECON report is one that slams the IASB’s proposed treatment of prudence.

It reads: “The IASB’s interpretation of ‘prudence’ only means ‘prudent treatment of discretion’.”

The MEPs go on to demand that the notion of ‘reliability’ accompany prudence.

Long-term investors such as the Local Authority Pension Fund Forum (LAPFF) and a wider investor coalition claim that prudence or caution in accounting is an important safeguard against fantasy accounting profits.

Meanwhile, away from the accounting framework, the Parliament also lined up to attack the IFRS Foundation over waste of public funds.

In a further set of amendments, the MEPs call on the Commission “to urge the IFRS Foundation to base its financing entirely on fees or public sources and to eliminate excessive remuneration to Board members”.

According to the amendment, the IASB chairman, Hans Hoogervorst, received a total of £554,000 for the role of IASB chair; the IASB vice-chairman Ian Mackintosh a total of £488,500; and other full-time IASB members an average of £455,700.

As a result of the Delaware-incorporated foundation’s charitable status for US tax purposes, the IFRS Foundation is required to file tax information in a Form 990.

IPE has established that this information was supplied to the European Parliament in both 2014 and more recently.

The MEPs have also called for the IASB to be “transformed into a public standard-setting mechanism under the aegis of an international treaty”.

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