ASCG takes up IFRS IC agenda decision on IAS 12

At its meeting yesterday, the ASCG’s IFRS Technical Committee discussed possible effects of an agenda decision taken by the IFRS Interpretations Committee (IFRS IC) in September 2017 as far as the German jurisdiction is concerned. The IFRS IC had discussed the applicability of IAS 12 to interest and penalties in the context of income taxes. The members of the committee had come to the conclusion that there was no accounting policy choice under IFRS to apply IAS 12 or IAS 37 for accounting for such additional tax benefits. However, they conceded that there was room for judgement with regard to the recognition, the timing and the presentation of results, without elaborating on any evaluation criteria.

In its deliberation yesterday, the IFRS Technical Committee, based on initial feedback received, concluded that there was inconsistency in Germany and that the IFRS IC‘s decision was not deemed to bring further clarity as regards interpretation of the German legal tax environment. The Committee decided to take up the issue and analyse its implementation against the German legal context. The objective would be to consider developing evaluation criteria that are then published for public comment. Any tangible outcome of this work will not be available before mid-2018.