Institute task force sees 'gap' in GAAP

American accounting contains an awkward contradiction. Though 99.7 percent of the country's 4.9 million corporations are privately held, a good deal of the country's generally accepted accounting principles are primarily relevant to the financial conditions of public companies traded on equities markets.

Meeting GAAP requirements can mean a lot of time, trouble and expense with little meaningful purpose. For years there has been a call for some kind of "Big GAAP-Little GAAP" system that would ease requirements for companies of a certain kind or size.

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