Tag: materiality assessment

SEC’s Acting Chief Accountant discusses materiality assessments in connection with restatements

In this statement from the SEC’s Office of the Chief Accountant, Acting Chief Accountant Paul Munter discusses materiality assessments in the context of errors in financial statements. As he summarizes the issue, the “determination of whether an error is material is an objective assessment focused on whether there is a substantial likelihood it is important to the reasonable investor.” And when an error in historical financial statements is determined to be material, a “Big R” restatement of the prior period financial statements is required. On the other hand, if the error is not material, “but either correcting the error or leaving the error uncorrected would be material to the current period financial statements, a registrant must still correct the error, but is not precluded from doing so in the current period comparative financial statements by restating the prior period information and disclosing the error,” known as a revision or “little r” restatement. In either case, Munter observes, “both of these methods—reissuance and revision, or ‘Big R’ and ‘little r’—constitute restatements to correct errors in previously-issued financial statements as those terms are defined in U.S. GAAP.” According to a review by Audit Analytics, “while the total number of restatements by registrants declined each year from 2013 to 2020, ‘little r’ restatements as a percentage of total restatements rose to nearly 76% in 2020, up from approximately 35% in 2005.” Should we attribute this change to improvements in audit quality or internal control over financial reporting, or could it be that some companies are not being entirely objective in making their materiality determinations? In the event of error in the financial statements, Munter emphasizes, companies, auditors and audit committees must “carefully assess whether the error is material by applying a well-reasoned, holistic, objective approach from a reasonable investor’s perspective based on the total mix of information.”