GASB Statement No. 34 Should be Revised
Author: Robert Newton Anthony
Publisher:
Published: 1999
Total Pages: 36
ISBN-13:
DOWNLOAD EBOOKGovernmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) Statement 34 unfortunately requires state and local governments to prepare two different sets of financial statements for the same events: government-wide statements and fund statements. The government-wide statements are based on the interperiod equity concept. Statement 34 recognizes that this is the preferable concept for measuring an organization's performance. It uses accrual accounting. The fund statements report on eleven funds; each is a self-balancing set of accounts. The amounts reported are based on measurement principles currently used by governments; these principles differ from accrual accounting in important ways. They focus on accountability in the short term and are inconsistent with the interperiod equity concept. ... The government-wide system does have one important defect. It doesn't recognize that contributed capital transactions should not enter into the measure of performance based on interperiod equity. This can be corrected by separating operating items from nonoperating items.