The Concepts of Goodwill Accounting

Abstract

The paper “The concepts of goodwill accounting” analyzes and compares several problems arising from accounting techniques concerning goodwill according International Financial Reporting Standards or Generally Accepted Accounting Standards of the United States of America. It is concentrated on evaluation of the harmonization level between these two Standards and in cases where these standards differ it tries to suggest the better solution for the selected problem. At the beginning it is oriented on the definition of goodwill in both Standards that is unfortunately not very precisely stated. On the contrary the way of its value calculation is defined very well. In the next chapters is emphasized that there is precise differentiation between accounting for goodwill existing and/or acquired in course of entity`s ordinary business activity and the ones acquired in course of a business combination. And because this segregation is respected in the rest of this paper the accounting procedures concerning goodwill identification, useful life, amortization and connected values (carrying amount, recoverable amount, fair value and the amount of net consideration transferred) are studied from this points of view too. Last but one chapter is interested in impairment of goodwill and in the end there are particular gained knowledge generalized into final conclusions.