In February, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) discussed its ongoing project to improve how companies provide information around business segments. It doesn’t appear that a proposal will be issued anytime soon. Instead, the FASB plans to reach out to more investors on what segment data they’d like to see disclosed.
Segment reporting guidance
The FASB has spent months on outreach related to potential tweaks to FASB Accounting Standards Codification (ASC) Topic 280, Segment Reporting. In general, the FASB wants to improve the detail businesses provide about their segments.
The existing standard advises businesses to connect the information for reporting segments based on the person or group of people described by the disclosure requirements and implementation guidance as the chief operating decision maker (CODM). Businesses are required to disclose certain information about their segments if the information is regularly reviewed by the CODM. This is more commonly known as the so-called “management approach” to segment reporting.
Under the existing rules, segment totals must be reconciled to the consolidated amounts if the segment totals are “significant.” In general, a business must report information about an operating segment if:
A segment that includes assets that are 10% or more of the combined assets of all operating segments also must appear in the financial statements.
Need for change
Investors often complain that the financial reporting that conforms to Topic 280 leaves them with too little information. They say large multinationals often report one or two business segments when other evidence indicates they should report more.
Investors say the problem can be traced to the leeway companies are given to determine when they should aggregate information from several business lines. In addition, the existing disclosure requirements are somewhat limited. Yet businesses are wary about offering too much information that could give competitors information about trade secrets.
Ongoing research
In June 2018, FASB staff began surveying issuers on ways to improve segment reporting. They explored three options for changing the current approach for determining which segment information needs to be reported. The management approach “requires an entity to report segment information in the way that management internally organizes its segments to make operating decisions and assess performance.”
Of the three alternatives, FASB staff didn’t recommend pursuing two of them. Under the remaining alternative, staff will study how to clarify the meaning of “regularly reviewed information,” with a particular focus on technology changes and information that’s reviewed by the CODM only on an irregular basis.
FASB members want more investors to be consulted as part of the ongoing study. In particular, FASB member Gary Buesser advocated focusing on two groups during the research study: 1) companies who report, and 2) investors who consume financial information.
Stay tuned
No formal decisions about segment reporting have been made yet. However, if your company is interested in participating in the FASB’s ongoing research study, contact your local Armanino expert as soon as possible.
Update on income tax disclosure project
On March 25, the FASB issued a revised proposal that would require businesses to provide more detailed income tax information. This project was temporarily put on hold due to the sweeping tax law changes under the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA).
Now that accounting professionals have had time to digest the details of the TCJA, the FASB feels confident that its revised proposal will reflect all the changes the board has made since Proposed ASU No. 2016-270, Income Taxes (Topic 740): Disclosure Framework — Changes to the Disclosure Requirements for Income Taxes, was first issued. Comments on the proposal are due by May 31.
Some of the challenges with this proposal relate to the disaggregation of domestic and foreign income tax data. At its February meeting, the FASB board opted to require companies to break down income tax expense or benefit and income taxes paid by federal, state and foreign amounts.
The FASB also agreed that both income tax expense and income taxes paid on foreign earnings that are imposed by the business’s country of domicile should be categorized as federal amounts, in order to minimize costs to preparers.
FASB Chairman Russell Golden agreed with the staff’s recommendations. He cited “a history of certain states taxing worldwide income of corporations headquartered in the state.… If you have foreign income tax expense and cash paid, [it] goes in the category of the jurisdiction that requires it, not where it is.”
April 17, 2019
