Abstract The article focuses on comprehensive income. The concept of comprehensive income was formally introduced in the Financial Accounting Standards Board's (FASB) Concepts Statement No. 3. Although the Board did not define earnings, it did describe the term in FASB Concepts Statement No. 5, Recognition and Measurement in Financial Statements of Business Enterprises. Earnings are a measure of performance for a period and to the extent feasible excludes items that are extraneous to that period-items that belong primarily to other periods. The Board noted that earnings is a measure of performance during a period that is concerned primarily with the extent to which asset inflows associated with cash-to-cash cycles substantially completed during the period exceed asset outflows associated, directly or indirectly, with the same cycles. The Committee on Accounting Procedure of the American Institute of Accountants generally favored the current operating performance approach. The two bodies worked out a number of compromises, but each ultimately proved unsatisfactory to one or the other or both, which led them to try to seek yet another compromise.
Johnson et al. (Fri,) studied this question.