Measurement and presentation of comprehensive income in financial statements of companies

• Authors: Szychta, Anna

Abstracts

EN

The paper explains the nature, measurement and presentation of comprehen-sive income in financial reporting to highlight the complexity of issues relating to income from the semantic, syntactic and pragmatic viewpoint, in the light of rele-vant accounting regulations, especially IAS 1 Presentation of Financial Statements and proposal for its amendment prepared by the IASB in 2010.Two concepts of income known in theory and practice, i.e. income as a measure of business entity's performance and as an enhancement of shareholder (investor) wealth, are reflected in accounting through measurement and presentation in finan-cial statements:1) net income, which encompasses current operating profit,2) comprehensive income.The determination and presentation of these categories in financial statements are controversial issues, widely discussed by accounting theorists and regulators. However, changes in financial reporting regulations and practice over the past two decades indicate an increasing number of companies presenting comprehensive income and its components in their financial statements. Presentation of net in-come, other comprehensive income and total comprehensive income in one state-ment, i.e. statement of profit or loss and another comprehensive income, in the format proposed in 2010 in the IASB and FASB Exposure Draft, seems to be a solu-tion enhancing the clarity of the financial statement. It embraces two categories of income and can make it easier for users to evaluate the performance of a public company and its management in the reporting period as well as the impact of com-prehensive income and its components on an increase of shareholders wealth.

Keywords

EN

pomiar wyniku; wynik całościowy; prezentacja wyniku; comprehensive income

• Publisher: Stowarzyszenie Księgowych w Polsce (SKwP), Zarząd Główny, Rada Naukowa
• Journal: Zeszyty Teoretyczne Rachunkowości
• Year: 2010
• Volume: 2010(59(115))
• Pages: 117-142

Contributors

author

Szychta, Anna