International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) are becoming the benchmark accounting standards for companies listed on international stock exchanges. The SEC treats them as equivalent of US Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (GAAP) and is even contemplating allowing their use instead of US GAAP. They are mandatory in Europe, Australia and South Africa. Canada, China, Brazil, Japan and India are planning to use them from 2011. Anybody interested in companies listed on the US stock exchanges needs to know something about them because hundreds of foreign companies are already using them to report in the US. Anybody interested in international business has to know these benchmark financial reporting rules. This book will explain the complex inter-relationships between the International Accounting Standards Board (the creator of IFRS), the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) and the Canadian Accounting Standards Board (AcSB), their work programme and their plans for the future. It will look at a series of central accounting issues such as revenue recognition, liabilities, pensions, off-balance sheet vehicles, impairment, intangible assets etc. and discuss how IFRS differ from US and Canadian GAAP. It will explain the organisational structure and background of the IASB and it will look at the potential impacts to financial reporting by American companies.