Jan. 20 FASB/IASB meeting

The FASB and IASB met again on Jan. 20 to continue their review of the new lease accounting standard proposals.

Post-inception measurement of leases with options & contingent rentals
The boards decided that the discount rate for the lease (for both lessees and lessors) should remain the same if the lease term is subsequently changed.
If the contingent rentals change, the discount rate would only change if those rentals are contingent on variable reference interest rates (such as LIBOR).

Short-term leases
The boards decided to provide an optional simplified form of lease accounting for leases with a maximum possible lease term (including all options) of less than 12 months. Discussion noted that this is beyond standard materiality thresholds (such as expensing all purchases or leases below a specific value).
For lessees, the boards decided to permit recognizing the undiscounted remaining rent as the liability and asset. Therefore, no interest would need to be calculated. It will be noted, however, that this will result in a higher liability (and asset) appearing on the balance sheet, so this becomes a potentially costly choice for lessees. However, the interest for a single year would normally be pretty small, so the difference was presumed to be not highly significant.
For lessors, the boards decided to permit treating short-term leases as service contracts, which would not require any recognition of a performance obligation; the receivable would be a simple account receivable.

Investment properties
FAS 13 does not treat properties held for investment differently from other leased assets. IAS 40, however, overrides IAS 17 (the IASB regulation for leases), and permits very different accounting for such leases. The IASB decided to maintain IAS 40 for leased investment properties that are measured at fair value. The FASB asked its staff to prepare an agenda item to consider a similar standard for US GAAP.

Review of additional aspects of lease accounting will continue at a joint February meeting.