Talk:Intangible asset

Questions

• this article equates "physical" with "easily convertible (into money)". Is this justified?
• the only example given in the introduction is a negative example.
• the only content of the article is goodwill. Are there other examples? Should the article be renamed?
• goodwill and customer base. What matters seems to be not the size of the customer base, but its fidelity.

-- Miguel

Hopefully Answers:

• Intangible assets are hard to get your hands around (sorry, had to use the pun). Intangible assets provide a company or organization an economic benefit in the same way every other asset does. McDonalds owns the name and classifies it as an intangible. This helps McDonalds because nobody else can use the name. If someone does use the anem and McDonalds takes them to court and wins, the extra legal costs can be capitalized and amortized.
• I think I fixed that.
• Yes. No, it does not need to be renamed.
• If a company purchases another company (or a part of it), goodwill is the "difference" between the net assets (Assets - Liabilities) and what was paid for the business/segment. Goodwill can be positive, representing the purchaser believes there is extra value in the business, or there can be negative goodwill. You seem to have customer base right... Zoop 14:55, 13 August 2005 (UTC)

General Comments

• Adding the classification of cash flow activity that intangible assets are would be beneficial. I believe it's an investing activity (rather than operating or financing). However I can't find any evidence supporting this, so I'll leave it to the experts! Mike.Suro (talk) 00:54, 19 January 2011 (UTC)

Inaccurate discription?

Hi, first of all, this is my first time posting a comment, so if I did something worng, I apologize and please let me know how it can be done. Also, maybe I missed it but I cannot find anywhere within the discussion to reply or post a comment, editing the page was the only way I could of done it. If anyone can show me where I can just simply "start a thread" that would be great.

Anyway, I've noticed that in the article there is the folloinw description under Financial Accounting: "In general, legal intangibles that are developed internally are not recognized and legal intangibles that are purchased from third-parties are recognized. Wordings are similar to IAS 9" This might not be accurate."

First I am confused with the phrase "legal intangibles". Looking at IAS 38, and after I have read most of the (2009 version) IFRS/IAS sections,(part of my job) I have not come across the term legal intangibles in IFRS. So I am not sure what it refers to.

Second, recognition criteria set forth under IAS does not distinguish the origin of the intangible asset. The recognition criteria set forth in IAS 38.9-24 applies equally to externally acquired intangible assets and internally generated intangible assets. The only difference being that for interally generated intangible assets, only expenditures incurred under development phase can be capitalize, and they are subject to an additional set of recognition criteria.

Saying "In general, internally generated intangible assets are not recognized" could be quite misleading. As it does not appear anywhere within IAS 38 and I don't believe it is generally accepted business practice to expense all expenditures on internally generated intangible assets. If this is the case, then it would be hard to explain why IAS 38.51-67 is included, which explicitly discuss how to recognize internally generated intangible assets.

Wikipedia has been an useful tool for me, so I figure I would put in my 2 cents.

-- phatpanda114 —Preceding undated comment added 18:23, 26 October 2009 (UTC).

Changed the lead section

Hi everyone, just a quick introduction about myself as this is my first contribution to Wikipedia. I am a qualified accountant and an early-career academic. I have a particular interest in intangible assets, hence the selection of this article to be my first. :)

The new lead section adopts a familiar textbook approach to the definition of an intangible asset. It describes the "evolution" of the intangible asset definition beginning with the Australian standards prior to 2005, then proceeding to IASB and FASB definitions. It provides examples of what intangibles are and how the definitions describe what they are not (but are commonly mistaken by first-year students to be intangibles).

Hopefully the new edit is helpful. I plan to make more revisions to this article as it is quite inaccurate and lacking in many respects. Shaun Steenkamp (talk) 05:07, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Discussion about the R&D section

I propose the removal of this paragraph:

The classification of research and development expenditure can be highly subjective, and it is important to note that organisations may have an ulterior motive in its classification of research and development expenditure. Less scrupulous directors may manipulate financial statements through their classification of research and development expenditure.

While it may be true it is very difficult to prove and academic research on the subject is tentative at best. Furthermore, for something to be classified as a development cost it must satisfy 6 requirements that are not easy to circumvent. Finally, if managers wish to manipulate reported earnings for any reason it's not a matter for accounting standards, ultimately auditors will pass judgement on whether a particular cost falls into either the research or development phase. What do you think?

Shaun Steenkamp (talk) 08:56, 19 December 2012 (UTC)

Dr. Dauchy's comment on this article

Dr. Dauchy has reviewed this Wikipedia page, and provided us with the following comments to improve its quality:

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We hope Wikipedians on this talk page can take advantage of these comments and improve the quality of the article accordingly.

Dr. Dauchy has published scholarly research which seems to be relevant to this Wikipedia article:

• Reference : Estelle P. Dauchy & Sophia Chen, 2014. "Tax-adjusted Q Model with Intangible Assets: Theory and Evidence from Temporary Investment Tax Incentives," Working Papers w0207, Center for Economic and Financial Research (CEFIR).

ExpertIdeasBot (talk) 17:30, 3 June 2015 (UTC)