The development of financial reporting in the U.S. has been closely related to the development of business corporations as means of carrying on much of the industrial activity of the nation. Both of these developments have taken place largely since 1900. It appear that a definite need exists at the present time for another examination of the old idea that disclosure, which includes the presentation of all significant accounting information as accurately and informatively as possible, is the guiding objective of financial statements. The article is concerned with this idea as it relates to recent discussions regarding the purpose and scope of published income reports of corporations whose shares are widely held. The unsettled controversy between accountants favoring all-inclusive income reports and those favoring selective income reports, which exclude certain special items of gain and loss, cannot be fully understood, unless related to the question of whether disclosure is an underlying objective of corporate reporting.

The transition from an academic to professional career is a major achievement and one that can be accomplished most efficiently by a working association with those practicing in the professional field. The desirability of a period of professional apprenticeship is recognized by most states in the requirements to be fulfilled in order to receive a certificate as a public accountant and by some schools in their recent efforts toward establishing, as an integral part of the curriculum, a period of time during which each accounting major works on the staff of a certified public accountant firm. This being the case, the college senior who desires a certificate must first secure employment. Some of the principal touchstones of a desirable staff accountant to which a prospective employer will give consideration can be academic accomplishments in all courses, particularly accounting and related subjects, ratings received in the achievement, orientation, and vocational preference tests sponsored by the American Institute of Accountants, extent of participation in extracurricular activities of the school such as athletics, arts, and other group activities, personal appearance, use of the English language and sincere desire for professional success.

National income estimations are in large part based upon business accounting data. Nevertheless, accounting data are in several instances modified in an attempt to obtain greater completeness and uniformity in the measurement of national income and product. The purpose of this paper is to consider some of the more important modifications of accounting data, both with regard to their quantitative significance in national-income estimation and with regard to the validity of the assumption that modifications of accounting data are necessary or desirable. The most important of the modifications of business-accounting data are (1) the inventory-valuation adjustment, applied to business profits and production data, and (2) the so-called imputations, or items of production and income in kind. Included in the latter category are imputations made in measuring national output for (a) wages and salaries paid in kind, (b) the rental value of owner-occupied houses, (c) the value of food and fuel produced and consumed on farms, and (d) nonmonetary income and product flows arising in connection with financial intermediaries.

There are two major problems in connection with accounting for corporate dividends. The first of these involves the source of the dividend; the second concerns the form or type of dividend. The American Institute of Accountants has held that the credit item in an upward revaluation should be regarded as part of the capital structure, not available for transfer to retained earnings; the item should be frozen until disposed of, if at all, by means of a stock dividend. In some circumstances, dividends may even be paid out of actual capital. This is legally permissible in the cases of wasting asset dividends, dividends out of reduction surplus or dividends declared during construction. Dividends are most commonly paid in cash, although they also may be paid in property, the company's own securities, securities of other companies held by it as investments or scrip. In other words, the dividend may represent a distribution of corporate assets, the establishment of a corporate liability or merely a transfer between proprietorship accounts. Accounting for the stock dividend is in accordance with the method of allocation determined upon.