Background
The materiality project arose as part of the IASB’s Disclosure initiative started in 2012. A draft practice statement on materiality was published on 28 October 2015, however, subsequently it became clear that some of the proposed guidance needed to be authoritative to have the desired effect, so the project was split up into a part that would see a practice statement published and a part that was intended to result in amendments to IAS 1 and IAS 8. The finalised Practice Statement Making Materiality Judgements was published in September 2017 at the same time as an exposure draft ED/2017/6 Definition of Material (Proposed amendments to IAS 1 and IAS 8), which is being finalised now.

Changes and reasoning behind the changes
The definition of material, an important accounting concept in IFRS Standards, helps companies decide whether information should be included in their financial statements. The updated definition amends IAS 1 Presentation of Financial Statements and IAS 8 Accounting Policies, Changes in Accounting Estimates and Errors.

The amendments are a response to findings that some companies experienced difficulties using the old definition when judging whether information was material for inclusion in the financial statements.

• Old definition of ‘material’: Omissions or misstatements of items are material if they could, individually or collectively, influence the economic decisions that users make on the basis of the financial statements (IAS 1 Presentation of Financial Statements).
• New definition of ‘material’: Information is material if omitting, misstating or obscuring it could reasonably be expected to influence the decisions that the primary users of general purpose financial statements make on the basis of those financial statements, which provide financial information about a specific reporting entity.

Three new aspects of the new definition should especially be noted:

• Obscuring. The existing definition only focused on omitting or misstating information, however, the Board concluded that obscuring material information with information that can be omitted can have a similar effect. Although the term obscuring is new in the definition, it was already part of IAS 1 (IAS 1.30A).
• Could reasonably be expected to influence. The existing definition referred to ‘could influence’ which the Board felt might be understood as requiring too much information as almost anything ‘could’ influence the decisions of some users even if the possibility is remote.
• Primary users. The existing definition referred only to ‘users’ which again the Board feared might be understood too broadly as requiring to consider all possible users of financial statements when deciding what information to disclose.

During redeliberations, the Board spent a lot of time on discussing what constitutes obscuring information. The amendments stress especially five ways material information can be obscured:

• if the language regarding a material item, transaction or other event is vague or unclear;
• if information regarding a material item, transaction or other event is scattered in different places in the financial statements;
• if dissimilar items, transactions or other events are inappropriately aggregated;
• if similar items, transactions or other events are inappropriately disaggregated; and
• if material information is hidden by immaterial information to the extent that it becomes unclear what information is material.

The new definition of material and the accompanying explanatory paragraphs are contained in IAS 1 Presentation of Financial Statements. The definition of material in IAS 8 Accounting Policies, Changes in Accounting Estimates and Errors has been replaced with a reference to IAS 1.

Effective date
The amendments are effective for annual reporting periods beginning on or after 1 January 2020. Earlier application is permitted.

Source:
www.ifrs.org
www.iasplus.com

The article is part of dReport – December 2018, Accounting news.