NEW YORK (CNN/Money) - Forget the debate on whether options should be expensed -- thanks to a proposed rule change from the Financial Accounting Standards Board, companies may have no choice but to grin and bear it.

Proponents of expensing, including Alan Greenspan and Warren Buffett, think options should detract from net income just like other forms of compensation. Critics include CEOs who don't want to see their companies' net income instantly deflated.

The FASB rule, which stops short of requiring expensing, would have nearly the same effect. Under the new guidelines, companies will need to put a table in their footnotes showing what both net income and earnings per share would have been had options been expensed. This will be required on a quarterly basis, and for comparison, results will go back three years.

"We believe this will create greater transparency," said FASB spokeswoman Sheryl Thompson. "For shareholders, this is a desirable thing."

Under the current rules, companies that don't expense stock options (which is to say most) only need to show the options effect one time a year -- in the footnotes to their annual reports. Shifting through the footnotes to find the information is tricky, especially since companies aren't required to show it in a table and can bury it in the text.

FASB has invited public comment on the proposed change until through Nov. 4. If the change goes through, it will be effective for quarterly and annual reporting periods ending after Dec. 15.

"I'm virtually certain that it will be finalized," said Patricia McConnell, head of the accounting and tax group at Bear Stearns.

FASB has long argued in favor of options expensing, proposing a rule that would mandate it in 1994. But because of intense lobbying pressure (mostly from Silicon Valley), FASB recanted.

Just a handful of companies moved to expense options back then, but with the increased investor attention on accounting issues, more companies (about 120 by Bear Stearns' count) say they plan to.

The hope now is that even more may follow suit, since they'll have to fully show the options effect in any case -- though some will surely continue to resist.

Either way, investors will have a lot more information at their fingertips. "Of course I'll look at it; it will be useful information," said Charles Crane, market strategist at Victory SBSF Capital Management.

One of the problems facing the market today, Crane thinks, is that it's very hard to compare results across companies and industries. Valuations on many tech companies, for example, look cheap compared to their non-tech counterparts -- until you look at the huge swath of stock options the tech companies have granted employees. One of the things the new rule would do is allow investors to easily see how companies stack up against each other.

"The sooner we can line up company A against company B and have some modicum of evidence the books have been prepared in a similar fashion, the better off the market is going to be," said Crane. "Even if the bottom line ends up looking mighty lean."

But some investors think the proposed change won't have all that much pull.

"If companies only have to report the impact of options in a footnote," said Jeff Matthews, president of the hedge fund Ram Partners, "people are going to treat it like a footnote. [FASB] should just say, 'Everybody expenses options, non-negotiable.'"

Matthew's wish will probably come true, according to David Hawkins, a Harvard Business School professor who advises Merrill Lynch on accounting issues. With the recent hue and cry over options expensing, and with Silicon Valley's lobbying power greatly diminished, FASB isn't likely to run into near the amount of pushback on options expensing as it did in the mid-1990s.

Moreover, the international accounting body, the International Accounting Standards Board, is expected to put forth a formal proposal by the end of the year that stock options be expensed, and FASB is committed to eventual harmonization with international accounting standards. In all likelihood, the change FASB has proposed is aimed at preparing companies for seeing the options they grant employees get counted against earnings.

"This is a good move," said Hawkins. "It hastens the day stock options are going to be required to be expensed."