with cash flow information, the literature has found that users may value deferred tax information, though this is dependent upon the cost of the information not being greater than the additional value of the information. The value of deferred tax information would need to be researched before an opinion on whether it is beneficial (outweighing the cost of information disclosure) could be formed.
5.23 Amortisation of goodwill
24% of sample companies had a goodwill asset in the Balance Sheet. The value of the goodwill ranged from $10,000 to $1.05 million. The significance of the goodwill to the company was indicated by showing:
a) 10% of goodwill as a percentage of the net assets
b) 10% of goodwill as a percentage of the total income
c) Total goodwill as a percentage of total assets
The results of (a) range from -83% to 12% (the negative value of results is representative of the negative net asset value). The median is 1.1% (see table 4, column 3). If we consider this as the effect on the Balance Sheet of goodwill amortisation for 1 year, it does not appear to have a significant effect. Significance in terms of users is often described as materiality. Comparing the median of 1.1% to an asset materiality of say 10%, there appears to be no significant, i.e. material, effect on the balance sheet.
Table five shows the number of companies with changes of 0%, 0 to 5%, 5 to 10%, and over 10%, where a change of 5% or over is considered material. For test (a) table 5, column 3 shows that only 4 of the 10 companies with goodwill in their balance sheets show a material change of 5% or more in net assets when 10% of goodwill is amortised. This suggests that this change in reporting standard would not have a material effect on net assets for the majority of companies.
The results of test (b) range from 0% to 7.4%. The median is 0.6% (see table 4, column 2). This test indicates what effect the amortisation of goodwill would have on the Income Statement. According to these results the amortisation expense for the year would not have a significant effect on the Income Statement, on average (The median of 0.6% being so small proportion of the total income that it is not considered material). However, the individual results of sample companies where the results are higher, e.g. the maximum of 7.4%, suggests that goodwill amortisation, as required by IFRS-SME may have a significant effect on some companies’ reported profits.