Comment letters update, lessor accounting

The IASB continues to post comment letters to its web site. As I write this, the count stands at 272, with a notation that "Comment Letters are currently being uploaded to the website." However, fewer than 10 letters have been posted this week. It looks like these are letters received after the deadline, which they are choosing to still include (some of the cover letters have dates after July 17).

At a joint FASB/IASB meeting on July 23, the boards announced that they would review the comment letters at a meeting in September.

At the same meeting, the boards reached the following tentative decisions on lessor accounting (reported in the FASB Action Alert):

1. Initial measurement of the lessor’s right to receive rental payments would follow existing literature for the accounting for financial assets under either IFRSs or U.S. GAAP (IAS 39, Financial Instruments: Recognition and Measurement, for IFRSs and Section 310-10-30 of the FASB Accounting Standards Codification™ for U.S. GAAP).
2. Initial measurement of the lessor’s right to receive rental payments under U.S. GAAP would be discounted using the interest rate implicit in the lease.
3. Initial measurement of the lessor’s performance obligation would equal the customer consideration received (that is, on initial measurement the performance obligation would equal the lessor’s receivable).
4. Subsequent measurement of the lessor’s performance obligation would reflect decreases in the entity’s obligation to permit the lessee to use the leased item over the lease term.

However, they note that all of these decisions presuppose maintaining the overall concept of setting up a performance obligation for lessors (the original asset remains on the books, and a receivable is added to assets with a matching performance obligation as a liability). A number of comment letters have criticized that decision, in part because it seems not to mirror lessee accounting, and the boards have instructed their staffs to do additional analysis of a different model that would derecognize the asset to the extent of the lease. (This was the staff's preference presented to the boards at their May meetings, as previously mentioned on this blog.)