I’ve been attending
a few seminars recently in Malaysia on various current issues, such as the new Companies Act 2016,
the Finance Act 2017 as well as transfer pricing developments. I was able to touch base with
a few fellow delegates and we talked in general about the challenges facing their
companies in this day and age. One topic that somehow kept being brought up was
the implementation of MFRS 15 Revenue
from Contracts with Customers.
I was
rather astonished that most of their respective companies had not even started planning
for it, despite the fact that we are now only nine months away. If you
remember, MFRS 15 was originally slated to come into effect on 1 January 2017
before it got pushed back to 1 January 2018. Why was it pushed back? The International Accounting Standards Board acknowledged the complexity of the revenue standard and to allow
more time for companies to properly implement it. Yet here we are, at the end of the first quarter of 2017, and many have still not started.