Accounting guidance views intellectual capital as intangible assets and specifies exactly what the term means for accounting recognition. Traditionally such accounts as patents, copyrights, franchises, and goodwill appeared under the intangible assets balance sheet caption, in the instances where the company purchased such assets from other entities. Since internally developed intangible assets, such as patents and copyrights, are generally expensed under current research and development accounting principle, only minimal expenditures, such as the cost of securing a patent may be recorded as an intangible asset. Externally acquired patents and copyrights, however, are recorded at purchase price. Franchises are normally externally acquired and recorded at cost as intangible assets.
The GAAP rules for a purchased subsidiary state goodwill is the excess of the cost of an acquired subsidiary over the sum of the fair values of all identifiable assets that are acquired, less liabilities assumed, that are acquired. Besides tangible assets, identifiable assets include any assets that are intangible assets and meet criteria that make them separable from goodwill such as they can be sold, transferred, licensed, rented, or exchanged or there is a legal-contractual relationship. Examples of identifiable intangible assets separable from goodwill are customer lists, customer orders, brands, and trademarks. If these components of intellectual capital are internally created, there is no means under current GAAP to place their value on the balance sheet. Research and development costs of the acquired subsidiary must be expensed. Goodwill, then, is a residual amount, frequently described as the value of the human capital acquired.
Under current reporting standards the parent company and subsidiary company are required to be reported in the financial statements as if they are a single entity. Therefore, the consolidated financial statements are extremely difficult to understand with the parent's goodwill ignored while the subsidiary's goodwill is shown.
Finally, GAAP does not amortize goodwill because it is considered to have an indefinite useful economic life. Goodwill, however, must be considered annually for impairment. The implied fair value of the reporting unit is compared to its assets including the residual goodwill asset, less liabilities. If the implied current fair value of goodwill is determined to be less than the recorded goodwill, the recorded goodwill must be reduced or entirely eliminated. Because of business economic cycles there are sometimes very large write-offs of goodwill when there is a downturn in the economy and the stock market. It would appear that human capital would not suddenly disappear because of a downturn in the economy.