Deferral of effective dates for SAS Nos. 134-140

At a special open meeting on April 20, 2020, the Auditing Standards Board (ASB) agreed to defer implementation of the seven most recently issued Statements on Auditing Standards (SASs). SAS Nos. 134-140, which, among other things, substantially change the auditor’s report, will be deferred one year and are now generally effective for audits of calendar year-end 2021 financial statements.

For those standards where there was a prohibition against early implementation, the ban has been lifted so that firms that are prepared to implement the standards this year will be permitted to do so. SAS Nos. 134 –140 are interrelated as the auditor reporting model adopted in SAS No. 134 was amended by the subsequent SASs. Primarily for that reason, the effective dates of SAS Nos. 134-140 were aligned so that these SASs would be implemented as a suite.

Accordingly, the ASB recommends that all these SASs be implemented concurrently.