Then every single public corporation should be jailed for fraud!
One of the dirty little secrets of finance is that publicly traded corporations maintain two different sets of “books,” or accounting ledgers. Before you get all riled up and start calling various attorney generals’ offices, understand that it is perfectly legal and normal. One set of books is...
blogs.cfainstitute.org
One of the dirty little secrets of finance is that publicly traded corporations maintain two different sets of “books,” or accounting ledgers. Before you get all riled up and start calling various attorney generals’ offices, understand that it is perfectly legal and normal.
One set of books is for the financial statements that they present to shareholders when they file their quarterly reports with the U.S. SEC, and that set is prepared according to GAAP (generally accepted accounting principles). The other set is the books they keep to pay their taxes to the IRS.
The government, it turns out, doesn’t much care for “generally accepted” and is often only concerned with what actually happened. It usually doesn’t want to hear about “estimates.” GAAP, on the other hand, actually requires management to make estimates of both revenues and expenses all the time.
GAAP vs. IRS Accounting
One of the most common differences between GAAP and IRS accounting rules is the amount of depreciation expense a company is allowed to take on its equipment. For the most part, companies try to stick to the “matching principle” in accounting. That is, they try to match when the revenue is generated with when the expense is incurred. This matching helps them plan for capital expenditures in the future.
Airlines, for instance, don’t recognize the expense of a new airplane in the period when it is delivered to them but instead stretch the expense out over the years of service that the plane will be used to generate revenue.