many experts predict IFRS will be the new reality in the near future for the United States. In practice, 113 nations currently follow IFRS with several more countries expected to follow suit in the coming months.

“If and when we ever reach the point of adopting IFRS, we already have the mechanism in place to fold them into the Codification,” Paschall explains. “We’ve got the vehicle for taking the IFRS and including them in the Codification. The practitioner would see very little change in the way that standards are codified.”

But just how simple does Codification make the standards? Paschall puts the numbers this way: U.S. GAAP standards number about 20,000 pages. When these standards were codified, the figure dropped to around 15,000 to 16,000 pages. With IFRS, the standards are reduced to about 2,000 pages, and for small and medium sized entities, the standards under IFRS drop dramatically to about 240 pages. And while most smaller businesses aren’t going to implement the simplified standard immediately due to a learning curve, and the need to educate lenders and other statement users, Paschall says the point is that Codification has paved the way for simplicity and adoption of IFRS. (It’s important to note that ASC won’t provide all of the SEC’s rules, regulations, interpretive releases or the governmental accounting standards. Obtaining the basic version of ASC is free, but the “professional” version, which includes advanced text searching and cross-reference capabilities, will cost $850 per user.