Limitations on the Significance of Invested Cost.

Abstract It is gratifying that the differences of opinion on the subject of Changing Concepts of Business Income have not taken the form of a conflict between the views of the practicing and the academic accountants. All the academic members of the Study Group, which issued the recent report under that title, joined with a two-thirds majority of the practicing members in approving the conclusions reached. The report of the Committee on Concepts and Standards of the Association, published in the January 1952, issue of the journal "The Accounting Review," follows much the same line as that of the Study Group but goes rather further on some points and not quite so far on others. There is also need to make dear to the public what financial statements, as now presented, do not provide, and to make up some of the deficiencies. The information needed is essentially of the same character as much on which accountants do now pass and of equally great importance. Not all accountants will be qualified to render the additional service needed, but neither are all of them qualified to cope with all the responsibilities now frequently assumed. Accounting, like law and medicine, must become a profession in which all practitioners must have a certain minimum of competence in every field, but few if any, will be equipped for every task the profession will offer.