Title: Exploring Accounting's Dumping Ground: A Twenty-Year Perspective on the S&P 100's AOCI
Author(s) : Michael Fischer, Curran Shannon, Laurrie Michael
Since Other Comprehensive Income (OCI) was first required to be reported by US companies with the issuance of SFAS 130 in 1997, the Accumulated Other Comprehensive Income (AOCI) account has been characterized as accounting’s “dumping ground.” There have been many studies, both prior and subsequent to the issuance of SFAS 130, that have explored both conceptual and empirical issues related to the reporting of OCI. However, there have been no systematic examinations of the contents of the AOCI account. The study reported here begins to close this lacuna in the literature by examining the AOCI amounts, both in total and by major component, reported by the S&P 100 companies in five-intervals from 1999 to 2019. The paper includes a reporting and discussion of the results of this examination, and identification of potential areas for future research.