1. Introduction

It is rather surprising that it has taken so long to develop standards of accounting principles and practices for something as essential as goodwill. These developments are particularly important because of the Accounting Standards Board’s (ASB) Statement of Principles (SOP) focus on assets and liabilities (Lawrence 2000).

Goodwill is defined as “the excess of the cost of the business combination over the acquirer’s interest in the net fair value of the identifiable assets, liabilities and contingent liabilities” (Elliott and Elliott 2007, p.450). However, goodwill can only be recognised when an entity has acquired another entity, as goodwill cannot be purchased or sold as a separate item (Dagwell et al. 2006).

Goodwill could be seen as a grey area of the financial statements, and will thereby lead to differences of opinion. Some do not think goodwill meet the requirements of an asset because of worries about exchangeability and controllability of......

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Title: Accounting Treatments Of Purchased Goodwill
Approximate Word Count: 2228
Approximate Pages: 9 (250 words per double-spaced page)

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