Income Statement Extraordinary Items

It depends on what s going on in the world and the specific business.

Income statement extraordinary items. An extraordinary item was a gain or loss from unusual events previously identified on a company s income statement. Extraordinary items in accounting are income statement events that are both unusual and infrequent. All extraordinary items are to be presented separately in the financial statements. They also are not predictable or occur on regular basis.

In other words these are transactions that are abnormal and don t relate to the principle business activities. Extraordinary items were presented separately and after the results of ordinary operations in the income statement along with disclosure of the nature of the items and net of related income taxes. This particular line item can be entirely absent perhaps for years at a time and then record windfall profits or losses that have wide reaching implications for the enterprise. If extraordinary items were reported on the income statement then earnings per share information for the extraordinary items were to be presented either in the income statement or in the accompanying notes.

Historically fasb has required companies to report these transactions.