1 International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) are a set of accounting standards developed by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) that is becoming the global standard for the preparation of public company financial statements. • IFRS requires capitalization of development costs once certain qualifying criteria are met. 2  U.S. GAAP generally requires development costs to be expensed as incurred, except for costs related to the development of computer software, for which capitalization is required once certain criteria are met.