FASB nixes potential projects on future agenda

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has decided not to add several projects to its technical agenda, including one on commodities, despite requests.

During a board meeting last week, FASB reported that it decided not to add the following potential projects to its agenda:

• Clarifying the scope and application of Topic 480, Distinguishing Liabilities from Equity, for Legal Form Debt Instruments;
• Accounting for equity securities;
• Eliminating the held-to-maturity (HTM) classification for debt securities;
• Making other amendments to the accounting for HTM debt securities; and
• Topic 740, Income Taxes, backwards tracing.

FASB also opted not to add a project to its technical agenda on accounting for commodities at this time but supports keeping the project on the research agenda for now.
In addition, FASB decided that certain potential presentation and disclosure requirements for HTM debt securities will be discussed during a future Agenda Prioritization meeting along with interest rate risk and liquidity risk disclosures.

The decision to keep the commodities project off the technical agenda came despite demands from some of FASB’s stakeholders and a recommendation from FASB staff. Instead FASB wants to make further progress on one of its current projects on environmental credits. 

“I think we should progress on the environmental credits project, so I would be supportive of holding this on the research agenda,” FASB chair Richard Jones said, according to Thomson Reuters Tax & Accounting. “Once the board has had a chance to go through environmental credits, my guess there is going to be a decision of ‘yes we want to do something with trading in that project’ or ‘no we want to send it to this project and deal with it broader in commodities,’ or ‘we don’t want to do anything,’ but at that point bring this back to the board and say, ‘OK, now with that additional knowledge, are you interested in commodities, do you think you have a feasible scope and what would that be.’ We will bring it back at a time in the future.”