International Journal of Accounting and Taxation

What trend for Comprehensive Income Presentation? Evidence from Italy
Tiziana De Cristofaro, Barbara Falzago

Abstract
Since 2007, IAS 1 has introduced two alternative formats (single-statement or twostatement) for the Comprehensive Income presentation into financial statements. The paper proposes a three-year period survey on annual reports of Italian nonfinancial services listed companies that aims to examine in terms of a trend-oriented analysis both the companies’ format choices and the Other Comprehensive Income (OCI) aptitude to explain such choices. The results show that, during the period considered: a) the two-statement option is chosen more often; b) companies rarely change the format; c) there is a constantly low association, or even independence, between the format and the OCI’s consistency, sign and size. These findings confirm that Italy uses the format closer to the national accounting tradition and suggest that the reasons for this choice have to be looked for elsewhere than the OCI. This analysis can be useful both to standard setters, to verify how successful the options they established are, and to accounting scholars, to design further research on the formats under discussion.

Full Text: PDF     DOI: 10.15640/ijat.v2n3a2