From an economic point of view, income is defined as the change in the company’s wealth during a period of time, from all sources other than the injection or withdrawal of investment funds. This general definition of income represents the amount the company could consume during the period and still have as much real wealth at the end of the period as it had at the beginning. For example, if the value of the net assets (assets minus liabilities) has gone from $1,000 to $1,200 during a period and dividends of $100 have been distributed, income measured on a value basis would be $300 ($1,200 minus $1,000, plus $100).
Accountants generally have rejected this approach for the same reason that they have found value an unacceptable basis for asset measurement: such a measure would rely too much on estimates of what will happen in the future, estimates that would not be readily attainable through independent verification. Instead, accountants have adopted what might be called a “transactions approach” to income measurement. Ideally they recognize as income only those increases in wealth that can be substantiated from data pertaining to actual transactions that have taken place with persons outside the company. In such systems, income is measured when work is performed for an outside customer, when goods are delivered, or when the customer is billed.
Recognition of income at this time requires two sets of estimates: (1) revenue estimates, representing the value of the cash that the company expects to receive from the customer; and (2) expense estimates, representing the resources that have been consumed in the creation of the revenues. Revenue estimation is the easier of the two, but it still requires judgment. The main problem is to estimate the percentage of gross sales for which payment will never be received, either because some customers will not pay their bills (“bad debts”) or because they will demand and receive credit for returned merchandise or defective work.
Expense estimates are generally based on the historical cost of the resources consumed. Net income, in other words, is the difference between the value received from the use of resources and the cost of the resources that were consumed in the process. As with asset measurement, the main problem is to estimate what portion of the cost of an asset has been consumed during the period in question.
Some assets give up their services gradually rather than all at once. The cost of the portion of these assets the company uses to produce revenues in any period is that period’s depreciation expense, and the amount shown for these assets on the balance sheet is their historical cost less an allowance for depreciation, representing the cost of the portion of the asset’s anticipated lifetime services that has already been used. To estimate depreciation, the accountant must predict both how long the asset will continue to provide useful services and how much of its potential to provide these services will be used up in each period.
Depreciation is usually computed by some simple formula. Two popular formulas are straight-line depreciation, in which the same amount of depreciation is recognized each year, and declining-charge depreciation, in which more depreciation is recognized during the early years of life than during the later years, on the assumption that the value of the asset’s service declines as it gets older. It is the responsibility of an independent accountant (the auditor) to determine whether the company’s depreciation estimates are based on reasonable formulas that can be applied consistently from year to year.
Depreciation is not the only expense for which more than one measurement principle is available. Another is the cost of goods sold. The cost of goods available for sale in any period is the sum of the cost of the beginning inventory and the cost of goods purchased in that period. This sum then must be divided between the cost of goods sold and the cost of the ending inventory:
Accountants can make this division by any of three main inventory costing methods: (1) first-in, first-out (FIFO), (2) last-in, first-out (LIFO), or (3) average cost. The LIFO method is widely used in the United States, where it is also an acceptable costing method for income tax purposes; companies in most other countries measure inventory cost and the cost of goods sold by some variant of the FIFO or average-cost methods. Average cost is very similar in its results to FIFO, so only FIFO and LIFO need to be described.
Each purchase of goods constitutes a single batch, acquired at a specific price. Under FIFO, the cost of goods sold is determined by adding the costs of various batches of the goods available, starting with the oldest batch in the beginning inventory, continuing with the next oldest batch, and so on until the total number of units equals the number of units sold. The ending inventory, therefore, is assigned the costs of the most recently acquired batches. For example, suppose the beginning inventory and purchases were as follows:
The company sold 1,900 units during the year and had 1,100 units remaining in inventory at the end of the year. The FIFO cost of goods sold is:
The ending inventory consists of 1,100 units at a FIFO cost of $5.50 each (the price of the last 1,100 units purchased), or $6,050.
Under LIFO, the cost of goods sold is the sum of the most recent purchase, the next most recent, and so on, until the total number of units equals the number sold during the period. In the example, the LIFO cost of goods sold is:
The LIFO cost of the ending inventory is the cost of the oldest units in the cost of goods available. In this simple example, assuming the company adopted LIFO at the beginning of the year, the ending inventory cost is the 1,000 units in the beginning inventory at $5 each ($5,000), plus 100 units from the first purchase during the year at $5.25 each ($525), a total of $5,525.
