John Hepp and Gary Illiano of Grant Thornton (GT) just released Private Company Financial Reporting, a white paper examining accounting standards for private businesses.
NASBA, AICPA, and TAF called a panel in December 2009 because of increasing concern about the relevance of current accounting standards for private companies. Hepp and Illiano’s paper presents the case for a reexamination of private company accounting standards and looks at the impact of gradual changes to the financial reporting model.

“In my view, the crucial point in the GT paper relates to changing definitions of critical terms in the world of accounting standard-setting, and the fact that the definition of some terms has shifted over time toward the ‘financial economics’ or ‘capital markets’ model,” says Edith Orenstein of the Financial Reporting Blog.

Click on this link for the full white paper.