SEC’s Investor Advisory Committee Objects to FASB Materiality Proposals

FASB SEC RULESThe Security and Exchange Commission’s (SEC) Investor Advisory Committee (IAC), in a January 21, 2016 letter to the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), objected to two recent FASB proposals that would give companies more control over what does and does not get disclosed in financial statement footnotes by letting management and auditors determine materiality based on a subjective legal test rather than a mathematical percentage test.

The two proposals were issued in September 2015 as Proposed Amendments to Statement of Financial Accounting Concepts (CON) No. 2015-300, Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting Chapter 3: Qualitative Characteristics of Useful Financial Information, and Proposed Accounting Standards Update (ASU) No. 2015-310, Notes to Financial Statements (Topic 235): Assessing Whether Disclosures Are Material. The proposals call materiality “an entity-specific aspect of relevance based on the nature or magnitude or both of the items to which the information relates in the context of an individual entity’s financial report.” Information is material “if there is a substantial likelihood that the omitted or misstated item would have been viewed by a reasonable resource provider as having significantly altered the total mix of information.”

The IAC’s concerns are that these proposals would give management too much discretion about the information investors get. They are concerned that this test could be used to give even less information than is currently required… and there are many who believe the current standard does not require enough disclosure as it is.

The FASB plans to hold a roundtable that will discuss all of its disclosure projects, including the guidance for footnote disclosures for fair value measurements, pension liabilities, and income taxes in mid-2016.