Review of U.S. GAAP and IFRS Convergence: Revenue Recognition Aspects

摘要

Revenue recognition has always been a cardinal convergence topic. Many scholars have been discussing about it for decades. This paper draws upon various accounting theories, published papers, comment letters, precedent IFRS, U.S. GAAP standards on revenue recognition, and CPA firm releases. Past researches mainly focused on differences between IFRS and U.S .GAAP and called for convergence. The paper not only discusses the history, necessity of convergence, principles applied for the new revenue recognition standard, but also cast light on the efforts and achievements formulated on the new revenue recognition standard - IFRS 15/(ASU)2014-09(Topic 606) by the two Boards. Evaluations on the Boards- success are presented and suggestions to entities in transition are also illuminated in the paper.