The Gap in the Perception of the GAAP

Abstract

Financial accounting is the language of the business world and generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) comprise its terminology. The dictionary-like use of GAAP in business discourse conveys a conception of accounting standards as definitional rules, i.e., as rules that merely provide consensual definitions for financial discourse without affecting the content of the discourse. As such, GAAP is believed to be neutral and bias-free and consequently, promulgation of accounting standards and the content of the GAAP have not attracted much legal attention.This article challenges the prevailing legal indifference towards the GAAP and those promulgating it. By revealing GAAP's effects on corporate behavior and on the function of many social, political and financial systems that utilize accounting parameters, this article discusses the substantive power private parties gain through the promulgation of accounting standards and how these standards imply a biased agenda that prefers the investor perspective over other contrary perspectives, thereby establishing a skewed financial perception of reality, such that subordinates the social order entirely to investors’ objectives. While reviewing how the GAAP is perceived by the court, this article further argues that the existing legal perception of accounting standards as neutral definitional rules has yielded court rulings that relieved accounting standards promulgators from professional duties and has prevented judicial review of the standards themselves, leaving the GAAP and its promulgators practically immune to legal scrutiny.Attention is then drawn to a possible solution presented by a recent SEC proposal to allow domestic issuers to disclose supplemental IFRS-based financial results in addition to those required by the GAAP. It is suggested that such additional financial disclosure can curtail GAAP’s hegemony, curb its promulgators and partially ease some of the existing biases of financial accounting.