(BQ) Part 2 book "Uncovering creative accounting" has contents: Fixed asset valuation, other asset valuation issues, the definition and ascertainment of liabilities, the definition and ascertainment of liabilities, group accounts and business combinations. | 6 Fixed asset valuation ■ The slippery slope of ‘value’ accounting ■ Valuing fixed assets ■ Asset revaluation ■ Depreciation ■ The concept of impairment ■ Investment properties ■ Intangibles and goodwill ■ Accounting for goodwill ■ Other acquired intangible assets ■ More complex assets 63 63 64 65 66 67 67 69 71 72 61 Fixed asset valuation THE SLIPPERY SLOPE OF ‘VALUE’ ACCOUNTING If the accounting profession had been content for the balance sheet to retain its original purpose as described in Chapter 1 – to record the cost of assets and the funds that have been used to finance them – the problems of asset valuation would be less complex and less open to creativity. What the leaders of the accounting profession sometimes seem to overlook is that the more you try to make accounting more ‘sophisticated’ and achieve objectives that it was never designed for, the more you open doors to creativity. It happened in the 1970s when there were attempts to account for inflation in increasingly complex and questionable ways, which in the end had to be abandoned. However, the lessons were not learned and we have already described how, soon after, the practice of upward property revaluations began to be allowed in balance sheets. We accept that the motivation of this ‘value’ approach to accounting is wellintentioned – to provide more information to those who analyze published accounts. However, it is a slippery slope and much of the content of this chapter is about the impact of the various subsequent attempts to place values on the fixed assets in the balance sheet. Once you change the question to ‘how much is it worth?’ instead of ‘how much did it cost?’ – you are into complex judgement areas which depend on many assumptions and challenge the intellect of the producer, auditor and interpreter of accounts. It is ironic but true that the desire to disclose and report more relevant information often leads to more manipulation and less .
