Question - Research and Development Costs
U.S. GAAP requires firms to expense all the internal expenditures immediately for research and development (R&D) costs. As an alternative, U.S. GAAP could require firms to capitalize and then amortize all internal expenditures on R&D that have future potential.
Why have those who have set the standards chosen to disallow the capitalization alternative?
How would the U.S. GAAP requiring capitalization of R&D costs benefit analysts' interests?