DP Chapter 8: Presentation

Continuing with the review of the FASB & IASB Discussion Paper on revising lease accounting. Today’s installment covers chapter 8.

Summary:

• Lease obligations should be reported as a financial liability; the boards disagree on whether they should be reported separately from other financial liabilities.
• Lease assets should be reported according to the nature of the underlying asset (leases on vehicles with owned vehicles, etc.).
• Leases of property, plant, and equipment generate “depreciation” while those of intangible assets generate “amortization.”
• Interest expense would be separated from other interest if obligations are separated.
• For cash flows presentation, the lessee must classify the lease asset as operating or investing; the obligation and interest could be classified operating, investing, or financing.

Detailed review:

Once again, the boards have gone in slightly different directions. While they agree that the obligation and asset for a lease should be reported on the lessee’s balance sheet, they differ on how for the obligation. The IASB sees no need to separate lease obligations from other obligations; the FASB does, in part because they consider the uncertain nature of obligations related to options to change the quality of the value. For the assets, the boards agree that they should be reported according to the nature of the underlying asset, rather than grouped together as leases, though they do want to see leased assets separated from owned assets of the same type as a subledger entry.

The boards rejected options to present some or all leased assets as an intangible asset. Some FASB members want to do that for leases that are not “in substance purchases” (a concept first raised in chapter 5, but one that has not been defined by those members or the board; at the least, it would seem to include leases with an ownership transfer or bargain purchase option, but whether it covers other leases is unclear).

On the income statement, leases for property, plant, and equipment should show depreciation, while the term used for intangible assets is amortization. Interest expense would be shown separately from other interest if (as the FASB prefers) lease obligations are separated from other obligations.

The cash flows presentation is tied to the boards’ separate discussion paper, Preliminary Views on Financial Statement Presentation; the boards have not discussed it specifically as part of the lease accounting review. According to those preliminary views (which will presumably be finalized prior to finalization of the lease accounting standard), a leased asset is considered a business asset, and the lessee must decide whether to classify it as an operating or an investing asset based on the nature of the asset and its use. The obligation and interest could be classified by the lessee as an operating, investing, or financing liability.

Again, the boards will need to come to a common agreement where they differ. How they decide will depend in part on the responses they receive from the public to this discussion paper.