The Financial Accounting Standards Board released an accounting standards update Monday to improve the requirements for identifying the accounting acquirer in business combinations such as mergers and acquisitions.

The update applies to Topic 805, Business Combinations, and Topic 810, Consolidations, in FASB’s Accounting Standards Codification, and is based on a recommendation of FASB’s Emerging Issues Task Force.

In a business combination, FASB noted, the determination of the accounting acquirer can significantly affect the carrying amounts of the combined entity’s assets and liabilities. The update will revise the current guidance for determining the accounting acquirer for a transaction effected primarily by exchanging equity interests in which the legal acquiree is a variable interest entity that meets the definition of a business. The amendments require an entity to consider the same factors that are currently required for determining which entity is the accounting acquirer in other acquisition transactions.  

“The new ASU is the first recommendation from the recently reconstituted EITF to be issued as a final standard, and we thank the group for providing a path forward in making financial reporting in this area more comparable and decision useful for investors,” said FASB chair Richard Jones in a statement Monday.

The amendments are effective for all entities for annual reporting periods starting after Dec. 15, 2026, and interim reporting periods within those annual reporting periods. The amendments require an entity to apply the new guidance prospectively to any acquisition transaction that occurs after the initial application date. Early adoption is permitted as of the beginning of an interim or annual reporting period. 

The House Ways and Means Committee on Friday night released a partial version of President Donald Trump’s tax proposal that calls for increasing the maximum child tax credit to $2,500 and raising the estate tax exemption to $15 million.

“Ways and Means Republicans have spent two years preparing for this moment, and we will deliver for the American people,” Representative Jason Smith of Missouri, the committee’s chairman, said in a statement.

The 28-page document is slated to be expanded before the committee votes on it this week. It provides a framework to achieve Trump’s campaign promise to extend his 2017 tax overhaul. 

It was notable, however, for what it didn’t address: Raising the deduction for state and local taxes and a tax on wealthy Americans that Trump has indicated he might consider.

For now, the text keeps the top rate at 37% rather than creating a new 39.6% rate for those individuals making more than $2.5 million, as has been discussed by Republicans behind closed doors. 

The text, with subtitles including “Make Rural America and Main Street Grow Again” has some other expensive new tax cuts. It temporarily elevates the standard deduction by $2,000 for joint filers and $1,000 for individuals through 2028. The proposal also would increase a carveout for qualified small business income from 20% to 22% and expand the types of activities that qualify.

Multinational companies would get an extension of current lower rates on foreign profits that they have been seeking. 

There is no text yet on top Trump pledges to end taxes on tips, overtime and Social Security benefits as well as to give tax credits for auto loans and building domestic factories. The questions of whether to repeal green energy tax credits or the tax credit for buying electric vehicles are also not resolved. Discussed tax increases such as on carried interest and executive compensation are also absent for now. 

Buried in the text, the bill text purports to tighten the eligibility of immigrants to receive Medicare and to create new obstacles to claiming a de minimis exemption to import tariffs.

The question of how much to increase the SALT deduction, which was capped at $10,000 in 2017, has created a dilemma for Speaker Mike Johnson and put him in the middle of Republican lawmakers from swing districts and conservatives who insist that tax relief must be paid for. 

Earlier Friday, Representative Nicole Malliotakis said increasing the cap to $30,000 would reduce the tax burden of the vast majority of people in her district, which includes Staten Island and part of Brooklyn. But five other members of the GOP conference have rejected the proposal.

House Republicans plan to help pay for an extension of President Donald Trump’s massive tax cuts by clawing back unused funds from scores of programs and grants in his predecessor’s signature climate law. 

Billions of dollars allocated under former President Joe Biden’s Inflation Reduction Act would be rescinded under a portion of Trump’s sweeping tax package released by a key House committee on Sunday. That includes funds channeled to the Energy Department’s $400 billion green bank loan program, and to industrial facilities to help lower their greenhouse gas emissions, according to a GOP summary of the House energy and commerce committee’s portion of the bill. 

“The legislation would reverse the most reckless parts of the engorged climate spending in the misnamed Inflation Reduction Act, returning $6.5 billion in unspent funds,” Representative Brett Guthrie, a Kentucky Republican who chairs the committee, wrote in the Wall Street Journal on Sunday.

The Republican plan also calls for revoking unused funds from more than a dozen divisions within the Energy Department. The Office of Minority Economic Impact, which helps minorities compete for agency grants and contracts, would see nearly $2.8 billion pulled, while the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, which has funded technological research in projects like plug-in electric trucks, would lose $402 million. Unspent EPA grants for electric trucks, environmental justice, reducing air pollution at schools, and other programs would also be rescinded.

The bill, which is almost certain to be changed by the Senate if it passes the House, would also repeal auto pollution and fuel economy standards, which were finalized by the Biden administration last year, and delay by 10 years the collection of a fee on methane emissions from oil and gas producers.

The legislation would also include $2 billion to help shore up the nation’s depleted Strategic Petroleum Reserve and mandate the Energy Department automatically approve applications to export liquefied natural gas to those that pay a $1 million fee. 

The proposal was met with alarm from climate groups like Evergreen Action, which said the plan would make deep cuts to vital clean energy and pollution-fighting programs.

“Republicans are once again siding with corporate polluters and billionaires over working families,” Executive Director Lena Moffitt said in a statement. “This is all so they can offer tax giveaways to the rich and prop up the profits of the fossil fuel industry.”

Ultimately, House Republicans are aiming for a total of $2 trillion in spending reductions paired with a $4.5 trillion in reduced revenue from tax cuts.