I. The CEO of the company believes that the company should incorporate Essay

I. The CEO of the company believes that the company should incorporate fair value accounting from next year while preparing and - Essay Example The other stakeholders such as employees, suppliers, and stockholders also find fair value accounting more realistic in predicting the trends in business. It is, therefore, easier to ascertain if the business is a going concern concept is on course or otherwise. According to the international accounting standards, fair value refers to the value of an asset or liability, which forms the basis of exchange between willing parties trough arm’s length production. In other words, in free market transactions the fair value is equal to the market prices, which is determined by the forces of demand and supply. The fair value accounting has several models, which include equity approach, mixed approach, income approach, and full fair value. The equity approach incorporates the realized and unrealized profit or losses in the revaluation reserve (Bazley & Hancock, 2013). When any transaction is realized, the changes in fair value will be reflected under equity. Under equity approach, not a ll the realized gains have any effect on the income statement. The mixed approach on its part, allows all changes in the unrealized fair value to be incorporated in the income statement while the changes in the realized profits or losses are reflected in the income statement as opposed to equity. On the other hand, income approach takes into consideration in the income statement, all the changes in the fair value because of holding losses or gains (Britton & Jorissen, 2007). Finally, under full fair value model, all the changes are incorporated in the income statement including the internally generated goodwill. Proponents of fair value asserts that historical approach has lost its meaning since it does not take into consideration the relationship between market capitalization and the firm’s reported financial performance. For instance, if the firm depreciation policy is based on historical cost accounting, then it becomes increasingly hard to determine the actual market valu e of equity net worth for the firm. Moreover, it is very hard to ascertain the true financial position of the firm if the firm values its assets based on historical cost accounting (Britton & Jorissen, 2007). On the other hand, the opponents of fair value accounting approach asserts that fair value accounting cannot bridge the gap between market value of all equity and market capitalization. The reason for this is that most accounting practices through the fair value approach do not report the internally generated good will. Due to this fact, it becomes increasingly hard to have a convergence between net assets of the business and the market value for the business. The debate on historical cost and fair value accounting takes into consideration the concept of reliability and relevance. The fact that fair value accounting approach incorporates existing market conditions; it has a better platform to predict the future patterns of the business as compared to the historical approach to accounting. It is therefore widely viewed that historical approach is the most relevant approach used to determine the net assets. However, when the assets are held to maturity, the historical cost approach becomes more relevant since fair value appro