چکیده : 

Statement of Financial Accounting Standard No. 130 (SFAS 130) was released

in 1997 which required publicly traded companies to separately report comprehensive

income in the financial statements. SFAS 130 prescribed three

alternative formats for the presentation without mandating any one specific

format. SFAS 130 also required certain details of comprehensive income to be

displayed prominently in the financial statements. The current study examined

the presentation of comprehensive income by a sample of companies traded on

the NASDAQ market to determine the predominant method of presentation

among these companies, five years after SFAS 130 became effective. Results of

the examination of one hundred annual reports showed that a majority of the

sampled companies used the third approach, which was to present comprehensive

income as part of the Statement of Stockholders’ Equity, as against the first

two approaches that favored presentation of comprehensive income on the face

of the Income Statement or in a separate statement. Further, the paper also

discusses some ancillary findings pertaining to the presentation of the details of

comprehensive income.