By Steve BurkholderThe Financial Accounting Standards Board moved closer to issuing final rules that would ease the reporting burden for employers that provide defined benefit plans.The cutting of costs of financial reporting would come in the form of an accounting policy choice that defined benefit plan sponsors would have on when they measure plan assets and obligations, FASB decided at its Jan. 28 meeting.Board Hopes to Issue Final Guidance in March Specifically, the board plans to allow employers with fiscal year-ends that don't fall at the end of a month to gauge defined plan assets and obligations “as of the month-end that is closest to the employer's fiscal year-end,” according to an issue summary written by FASB's staff.In addition, once such an accounting policy election is made, companies would have to use that measurement date consistently, the board concluded.FASB hopes to issue the planned guidance as early as late March. It would be effective for public companies for financial statements covering annual and interim periods starting after Dec. 15, 2015.Private companies would get an additional year, for annual-period reporting, beyond that effective date to decide to make the election. Early adoption is to be allowed for both public and private companies, FASB decided.Big Four, IMA Support FASB's Simplifying The Big Four accounting firms and the financial reporting committee of the Institute of Management Accountants support the larger FASB action on simplifying the measurement date for defined plan assets and liabilities.Allowing employers “to use the month-end closest to their fiscal year-end date alleviates the potentially difficult task of rolling forward or back the actuarial valuation of liabilities and the fair values of plan assets or otherwise documenting that such activity is immaterial,” PricewaterhouseCoopers wrote to FASB in a Dec. 12 comment letter.The short-term project forms part of the board's multi-faceted initiative to make accounting rules less complex.Choice for Interim Remeasures Other highlights of FASB's decision-making Jan. 28 on the project include:Extending the accounting policy election to interim remeasurements of significant events;Directing that the board's standing panel, the Emerging Issues Task Force, take up two sub-issues, including a question of whether financial statements of plans, and not only of employers, be afforded the accounting policy choice on...