Tentative Board Decisions

Tentative Board decisions are provided for those interested in following the Board's deliberations. All of the reported decisions are tentative and may be changed at future Board meetings.

Wednesday, April 21, 2021 FASB Board Meeting

Conceptual framework—elements. The Board discussed the feedback from comment letter respondents on issues related to the asset definition in the proposed FASB Concepts Statement No. 8, Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting—Chapter 4, Elements of Financial Statements. The Board decided the following:
  1. To remove the terms probable and future and the phrase past transactions or events from the current asset definition.
  2. To add more language on the identifiable criteria to Chapter 4 to help with identifying whether internally generated intangible items meet the definition of an asset.
  3. Determining when research and development activities qualify as an asset is a standards-level decision.
The Board also asked the staff to draft two alternatives of the asset definition, one including the term control and one without, along with potential explanatory language on the issue, to present to the Board at a later date.

Next Steps

The Board will discuss additional feedback from comment letter respondents related to proposed Chapter 4 of Concepts Statement 8 at a future Board meeting.