Business and Personal Finance Dictionary

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• EXTRAORDINARY ITEMS
  
  Accounting income, gains, expenses, or losses resulting from transactions or events that are both unusual in their nature and infrequent in their occurrence. The GAAP requirements for defining something as extraordinary are strict. The exact language, found in APB Opinion No. 30, paragraph 20, states in order for extraordinary items to be considered unusual... "the underlying event or transaction should possess a high degree of abnormality and be of a type clearly unrelated to, or only incidentally related to, the ordinary and typical activities of the entity, taking into account the environment in which the entity operates ....". Thus the same transactions or events can be extraordinary for one firm but ordinary for another firm. When extraordinary items are reported, they are shown on the income statement net of applicable income taxes.
  
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