National Professional Services Group
It has been almost fifteen years since FAS 109 was issued, yet the accounting for income taxes continues
to pose many challenges for preparers, users, and auditors. Among those challenges are the tax accounting
rules for intraperiod allocation, business combinations, and foreign operations. New challenges arose
with the FASB's issuance in June 2006 of FIN 48, which sets out a new comprehensive model for how a
company should recognize, measure, present, and disclose in its financial statements uncertain tax
positions that it has taken or expects to take on a tax return.
PricewaterhouseCoopers is pleased to offer this comprehensive manual on the accounting for income
taxes. It is intended to assist you in interpreting the existing literature in this complex area of accounting
by bringing together all of the key guidance into one publication, providing several comprehensive
examples to help navigate the guidance, and offering our own perspective throughout, based on both
analysis of the guidance and experience in applying it.
While this publication is intended to clarify the fundamental requirements involved in the accounting for
income taxes and to highlight key points that should be considered before transactions are undertaken,
needless to say it cannot substitute for a thorough analysis of the facts and circumstances surrounding
proposed transactions and of the relevant accounting literature. Nonetheless, we trust that you will find
in these pages the information and insights needed to work with greater confidence and certainty when
applying the provisions of FAS 109 and the related authoritative literature surrounding the accounting for
income taxes.
