With the convergence projects over the last few years, the remaining differences are fairly small and, even then, only an accountant might understand or appreciate the reporting subtleties that result.  Will mezzanine presentations confuse? Will anyone care if they do?

Switching to IFRS may help prevent the politicization of accounting standards and hopefully forestall future efforts to legislate GAAP – recall the misguided efforts to stop expensing of stock options and the lobbying of banks who wanted to stick their collective heads in the sand when it came to writing down CDOs. IFRS Rule 9 aside, the invisible hand will not be fooled. Accounting needs to stay outside the hands of the politicians – and outside pure academia as well. Too many armchair standard setters – real guidance for real accountants is what we need.

Principles based versus rules based – not really.  IFRS will eventually emulate GAAP in terms of the volume of rules. Once the principles get bent enough, with IFRS 9 for example, the public will demand clearcut rules to follow. IFRS grows and becomes more like GAAP every day. GAAP was and is the current gold standard.

Big GAAP vs little GAAP – IFRS for SMEs…very interesting there…maybe a future post.