Australian companies will have to expense executives' options in 2004 - not 2005, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Treasurer, Senator Ian Campbell, said today.
He said a standard requiring this would be released as an exposure draft by the International Accounting Standards Board in October for three months and issued as a final standard next year.
Under this timetable set by the IASB and the Australian Accounting Standards Board, the first listed Australian companies would have to comply with the standard for their half-year reports ending June 2004.
"This timetable ensures that Australia will be one of the first countries in the world to make it a legal requirement for companies to fully disclose and expense the value of share options issued to their executives," he said.
"The 2004 starting date has been the plan since the Financial Reporting Council announced in June that Australia would fully adopt a single set of international accounting standards, as will the European Union and hopefully the United States, in 2005."
Senator Campbell said the shadow Treasurer was wrong to claim at the weekend that expensing options would not come into effect until 2005.
"Under the Australian Accounting Standards Board's current policy, we will be picking up international standards to the extent possible between now and 2005," he said. "The standard relating to expensing share options will follow that path.
"The whole body of international standards will be adopted in January 2005, but if there are Australian standards at that time which do not have international equivalents they will remain in place international versions are developed.
"Not only has Labor got it wrong, but once more it is saying that it would interfere in the independent process of accounting standard setting. That's exactly the sort of behavior that occurred in the United States with disastrous results."
CANBERRA
26 August 2002
Further information: Wayne Grant (02) 6277 3955 or 0407 845280