SUMMARY OF BOARD DECISIONS
Summary of Board decisions are provided for the information and
convenience of constituents who want to follow the Board’s deliberations. All of
the conclusions reported are tentative and may be changed at future Board
meetings. Decisions are included in an Exposure Draft for formal comment only
after a formal written ballot. Decisions in an Exposure Draft may be (and often
are) changed in redeliberations based on information provided to the Board in
comment letters, at public roundtable discussions, and through other
communication channels. Decisions become final only after a formal written
ballot to issue an Accounting Standards Update.
December 8, 2010 FASB Board Meeting
EITF
Consensus on Issue 09-H, "Health Care Entities: Presentation and Disclosure of
Net Patient Service Revenue, Provision for Bad Debts, and the Allowance for
Doubtful Accounts." The Board decided to reexpose the consensus
reached by the EITF at its November 19, 2010 meeting regarding Issue 09-H,
“Health Care Entities: Presentation and Disclosure of Net Patient Service
Revenue, Provision for Bad Debts, and the Allowance for Doubtful Accounts,"
because of concerns raised by some constituents about the potential effects and
implementation issues that may arise as a result of that consensus. The comment
period for the Exposure Draft will be 60 days.
Private company
outreach. The staff summarized the broad standard-setting concerns of
nonpublic stakeholders received through various outreach forums. One issue,
among many others raised, is a concern about the cost of fair value measurements
that are currently required to evaluate goodwill for potential impairment on at
least an annual basis.
The Board expressed support for adding a project
to its agenda to explore alternatives to the manner in which reporting entities
are required to assess goodwill for potential impairment. The project discussed
by the Board only relates to step one of the two-step goodwill impairment test,
which requires a reporting entity to compare a reporting unit’s fair value to
its carrying amount. The second step is then performed only if the fair value
calculated in step one is less than the reporting unit’s carrying amount in
order to calculate the amount of the impairment.
The FASB Chairman
decided to add a project to the Board’s agenda that will explore alternative
approaches to the manner in which nonpublic entities are required to assess
goodwill for potential impairment.
Although the project is focused on
reporting by nonpublic entities, the Board requested that the staff perform
additional research about the implications of also including public entities in
the scope of this project and to report this information during
deliberations.
The FASB Chairman decided not to include as part of this
project the consideration of alternative treatments in the recognition and
measurement of goodwill.
The Board intends to complete its deliberations
by March 31, 2011.