Mrs. Businesspundit recently had one of those "continuing education" courses in order to keep her skills as an auditor fresh. With all the recent changes due to Sarbanes-Oxley, there was plenty to discuss in the class. The teacher, a well respected audit consultant who shall remain nameless, discussed the increasing costs for small private companies of complying with the new rules, and made a prediction. He said that small corporations may soon abandon GAAP, and use tax basis financial statements when obtaining credit, and that creditors may soon come to accept this. Non-GAAP statements aren't affected by most of the new rules, which means less time and worry for small companies. Mrs. Businesspundit responded to this idea with a quip that provided the title for this post "now GAAP has become the new four letter word." That seems to be how auditors feel about it.
