INTRODUCTIONAccording to Robert Swieringa (1997), of the Yale School of Management, "We are entering an era of technology, information and global competition with a model of financial accounting that has been fashioned almost 100 years ago. » This same accounting model continues to evolve today. One area in particular is accounting for intangible assets. In the business sector, assets are important economic resources and are classified as tangible or intangible. Tangible assets are easily thought of as physical objects including items such as buildings, machines, vehicles and fixtures. Due to their nature, property, plant and equipment are directly recognized in the financial statements. However, intangible assets cannot be seen and when it comes to accounting for them, a major question that has plagued the business world for many years is how to recognize and account for them (Hadjiloucas and Winter, 2005) . This means that a company's financial statements will be different in another jurisdiction depending on their accounting rules. That said, this paper will examine how intangible assets are currently viewed and accounted for as well as any changes to the accounting model. INTANGIBLE ASSETS Intangible assets can no longer be neglected. Eighty percent of the market value of public companies is made up of intangible assets (Osterland, 2001). In fact, the Harvard Management Update (2001) points out that the value of intangible assets has become on average three times that of physical assets. Accounting issues related to intangible assets have always been present, but are now being brought to the forefront. Despite the many years that companies and regulators have wrestled over the nature of...... middle of paper ...... agreed agreement. Additionally, US GAAP and IFRS spending generated internally generated assets. IAS 38 distinguishes between research and development and all research-related costs are expensed as incurred. However, any costs noted during development are only capitalized when a company demonstrates that certain criteria are met. As a result, according to Hadjiloucase and Winter (2005), after an acquisition, all US GAAP profits are immediately affected, while IFRS profits take a few years to flatten out. In comparison, under US GAAP, all internal costs are affected. generated are not capitalized unless a specific rule requires it. An example of this would be software development. Under US GAAP, software can be distinguished between software developed for sale to third parties and software developed for internal use..