IFRS Technical Committee recalls key considerations for the half year interim reporting and decides to revise Implementation Guidance 3 in the medium term

ASCG Implementation Guidance 3 (IFRS) “Selected IFRS Accounting Issues with a Particular Relevance to Macroeconomic and Entity-specific Crisis Situations” was developed by the former Accounting Interpretations Committee (AIC) in the course of the financial crisis in 2009. This implementation note draws the attention of accountants to certain facts in the German legal context and provides them with assistance in dealing with crisis situations in the accounts.

In the course of the current coronavirus pandemic, the ASCG had placed the text on its website free of charge with the kind permission of the Schäffer-Poeschel publishing house, because a number of the issues addressed at that time as well as the assessments submitted are still valid under IFRS.

The IFRS Technical Committee, as the successor body to the AIC, last reviewed the implementation guidance in July 2013 and made only minor adjustments at that time. In the implementation guidance, some references are now outdated and need to be adapted. The Secretariat has taken this as an opportunity for a renewed refer-ral by the Technical Committee and asked its members to assess whether, in addition to the necessary editorial revisions, more substantive changes should also be made.

As a result, the IFRS Technical Committee took the following decisions at its 85th meeting at the beginning of June:

1. ASCG Implementation Guidance 3 (IFRS) will be amended at short notice only with regard to necessary editorial changes. As justification for its decision, the Committee points at the fact that announcements by other organisations are already available (see our news item dated 3 April 2020), which provide sufficient support in the current situation, and that the content of the half year interims of capital market-oriented companies is difficult to revise, both for these companies and for the ASCG, due to the consultation process required.
2. For the upcoming interim reports for June 2020, the IFRS Technical Committee again refers to the existing statements in Section 9 (Compliance with special reporting obligations in crisis situations) of the implementation guidance. Particularly relevant are the statements in GAS 20 Group Management Report on the economic report (GAS 20.53 et seqq.), on the forecast report (GAS 20.118 et seqq., in particular GAS 20.133 on exceptionally high uncertainty with regard to the assessment of future developments) and on the risks and opportunities report (GAS 20.135 et seqq.) as well as the disclosures in the notes required by IAS 34.15, 15A-15C, 16A(b)-(d), (h) and (j) and 34A(j).
3. In the medium term, the implementation note will be comprehensively revised and extended. The IFRS expert committee recognises a clear added value in a comprehensive and generally valid implementation note, which basically offers assistance in crisis situations of various kinds. In this sense, the announcement should address both topics that have already been taken up by other organizations (with reference to the current crisis) and additional topics that have not yet been addressed. The existing limitation to matters that are specific to the legal system for German accountants, which is due to the way the RIC works, is to be abandoned.
4. Since most of the questions are not only relevant for companies reporting according to IFRS, but (may) also concern companies reporting according to German GAAP, it is to be considered together with the German GAAP Technical Committee to work on the revision of the implementation note together.