L'impairment test delle immobilizzazioni materiali secondo l'OIC 16: analisi di alcune criticità

The aim of this paper is to verify if there is consistency between the national accounting standard n. 16 (the OIC 16) and the Ital-ian regulations for preparing a company’s financial statements and the other national accounting standards. The objective of the OIC 16 is to prescribe the accounting treatment for tangible long-lived assets so that users of the financial statements can discern information about an entity’s investment in its tangible long-lived assets and the changes in such investment. The principal issues in accounting for long-lived assets are the recognition of the assets, the determination of their carrying amounts and the depreciation charges and the impairment losses to be recognised in relation to them. The research is based on a deductive approach. From the analysis it seems to emerge that there could be some elements of inconsistency: some of them are internal, when some of the OIC 16’s guide-lines are inconsistent with each other; others are external, when some of the OIC 16’s guidelines are inconsistent with those prescribed by the Italian regulations for preparing a company’s financial statements or the other national accounting standards. For each element of inconsistency we propose a possible solu-tion that should be considered as a suggestion for further re-search. Particular attention is paid to the impairment losses of tangible long-lived assets. It seems that the OIC 16’s rule for determining value in use of tangible long-lived assets could be inconsistent with the Italian regulations for preparing a company’s financial statements.