Taxand USA discusses the newly issued GAAP standard on revenue recognition for customer contracts.
I vividly recall the moment in the summer of 2014 while attending a CPE event at the Miami Marlins Park. Sitting in a room of primarily controllers and chief financial officers, those on the front lines of what was about to come, it became clear that we were in for a heavy dose of CPE on a newly issued US GAAP standard on revenue recognition for customer contracts.
While many of the in-depth details were more than most could absorb in a two-hour session, I could not help but ponder what all of this meant to the tax professional. Although we tax professionals have come to expect and embrace changes to rules and regulations, the thought of understanding the guts of the new GAAP standard and implementing an effective plan to ring fence this left me secretly hoping for more time or perhaps a change in course.
Discover more: Customer contract accounting — bottom of the 9th inning
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With the go-live date around the corner, the prudent course is to get into the game now by actively engaging in dialogue with internal cross-functional teams and/or outside advisors, by attending internal and/or external training sessions addressing the upcoming changes, and by carefully thinking about the critical processes and procedures needed to both adopt and incorporate such GAAP changes into income tax accounting for financial and tax reporting. It is the bottom of the 9th inning — are you ready?