FASB to Practitioners: ‘Substance Over Form’ for Me but Not for Thee – An Apologia

Abstract

Abstract This an apologia to Williams, P. F. (2022). The decline of substance over form in accounting: A problematic dichotomy. Accounting, Economics, and Law: A Convivium critique of Fischer, D., Ellman, O., & Schochet, S. (2021). The decline of substance over form in accounting. Accounting, Economics, and Law: A Convivium, 20190052 article about the decline of substance over form in accounting. The concept of “substance over form” has traditionally been a guiding principle for practicing accountants. In recent years, FASB has taken away the prerogative from individual practitioners to organically evolved GAAP. In the pre-FASB era, GAAP was indeed a bottom-up generally-accepted framework. Nowadays, FASB appropriates to itself the privilege to decide when form conforms with economic substance and when form should be bent to correspond to accounting theory.