FASB trips up on R&D

Falling victim to inconsistencies in its own rulemaking, the Financial Accounting Standards Board has given up proposed changes to the rules governing accounting for purchased in-process research and development. Instead, FASB may reconsider its position on R&D accounting as a whole.

According to Michelle Krupa, FASB's project manager on in-process R&D, the board ran into a snag while trying to reconcile how governance of purchased R&D costs could be made consistent with two different and unrelated accounting rules...