FASB Publishes Its 2021 Agenda Consultation Report

Norwalk, CT—June 29, 2022—The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) today issued its 2021 FASB Agenda Consultation Report. The report summarizes the robust stakeholder feedback obtained during the 2021 agenda consultation project and how that feedback has influenced the Board’s technical and research agendas and standard-setting process as of June 29, 2022.

During the agenda consultation process, the FASB asked stakeholders to share their views on where they think the Board should focus its resources to best fulfill its mission to establish and improve financial accounting and reporting standards to provide useful financial information to investors and other allocators of capital. Starting in late 2020, FASB members and staff performed outreach with a broad range of stakeholders, including advisory groups. The collective input received from meeting with more than 200 stakeholders (approximately one third of whom were investors) formed the basis of the FASB’s June 2021 Invitation to Comment (ITC), Agenda Consultation, which elicited 522 responses.

“The feedback from all of our stakeholder groups was tremendous and the increased participation of investors in our process has already shaped our agenda,” noted FASB Chair Richard R. Jones and Technical Director Hillary H. Salo in their introduction. “The top seven most frequently cited investor priorities are now included on either our technical agenda or are undergoing further analysis as part of our research agenda.”

The report notes that investor feedback helped the Board define a new path forward on the financial performance reporting project, revising its objective and scope to focus on disaggregation of income statement expenses. Investor input also helped focus the FASB’s long-term project to improve the transparency and usefulness of income tax disclosures by revising its objective and establishing a project scope that primarily focuses on income taxes paid and the rate reconciliation table.

The Board also added the following projects to its technical agenda based on feedback from investors and a broad range of stakeholders:

• Accounting for and Disclosure of Digital Assets
• Accounting for Environmental Credit Programs
• Accounting for and Disclosure of Software Costs.

Feedback from investors and a broad range of stakeholders also resulted in new research projects aimed at gathering more information for potential technical agenda projects in the following areas:

• Accounting for Exchange-Traded Commodities
• Accounting for Financial Instruments with Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG)-Linked Features
• Hedge Accounting Phase 2—this research project was expanded to consider changes to the definition of a derivative
• Accounting for Government Grants, Invitation to Comment
• Consolidation for Business Entities
• Financial Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for Business Entities
• Statement of Cash Flows.

In addition, significant feedback was received on the existing research project on accounting for and disclosure of intangibles that has helped shape the future direction of the project.

Finally, extensive feedback was received on projects on the existing technical agenda. The feedback helped define the path forward on several projects and resulted in the deprioritization and removal of other projects from the technical agenda.

The FASB will continue to consider agenda requests as part of its regular standard-setting process, noted Jones and Salo, who thanked stakeholders for their engagement in the 2021 agenda consultation project while encouraging stakeholders to share their views on these and other projects and financial reporting issues as they develop.

The full report is available at www.fasb.org.