Historical Cost vs. Fair Value to Measure Accounting Income? Some Comparative Arguments Provided by Accounting Professionals[Coûts historiques vs. justes valeurs pour mesurer le résultat comptable ? Les arguments comparés des professionnels du chiffre]

In its 2011 call for projects, the French accounting standard setters evoked the need to rehabilitate the income statement by excluding unrealized gains (the income statement approach), thus taking the opposite view from the concept developed by the IASB (the balance sheet approach). The objective of the paper is to respond to this call by making an attempt to understand the reasons provided by professional accountants to include or exclude unrealized gains in the comprehensive income. What are the arguments in favor of a "monist" approach (based on historical cost) or those in favor of a "dualist" approach (based on fair value)? We conduct a qualitative study using 31 semistructured interviews and carrying out two content analyses – lexical and thematic. Results first show that there is no clear spilt between financial statement users and preparers in terms of language and concerns. Second, historical cost and fair value are not considered features of opposite accounting models, but rather complementary in today's business environment.