April 29th, 2013
Changes Ahead - A New Lease Standard
The
main objective of financial statements is to provide faithful representation of
company's position. However, there are some accounting practices, such as lease
transactions, that have always been criticized by both the Financial Accounting
Standard Board(FASB) and the International Accounting Standard Board (IASB).
The FASB and the IASB have been working together to develop a new approach that
will allow rights and obligations (assets and liabilities) to be properly
represented on the balance sheet. The boards
are developing proposals after considering responses to their Discussion Paper
and their 2010 Exposure Draft. The goal of this article is to provide
information regarding the status of the proposed lease standard, the basic
changes in lease accounting due to proposed lease standard, the likely
effective date of new standard, and implementation issues.
The FASB announced lease re-exposure
on April 10th 2013. The board agreed unanimously to re-expose their revised
proposal for a lease standard for a 120 day comment period. The boards plan to issue the new proposed
accounting standard by the second quarter of 2013.
The existing lease standard requires
the lessee to expense periodic rent on his or her income statement on a
straight-line basis. The lessor records the periodic rental income as revenue
on his or her income statement. In other words, the operational lessee only
records the rent expense on the income statement and discloses future lease
payments in disclosure notes.
The boards proposed a right-of-use model for
all leases, eliminating all operating leases. In other words, the proposed new
lease standard requires the lessee to include all long-term leases initially on
the balance sheet. The lessee would measure the lease liability based on the present
value of the lease payment over the period, using discount rate at the lease
inception. The lessees must classify their leases into two categories:
insignificant or significant portion of the leased asset to be consumes. For
leases that require the lessee to own an insignificant portion of the leased
asset, such as land or a building, the lessee must categorize the lease as a
straight-line basis. Under straight-line basis, the lessees would recognize
lease expense on a straight-line basis. For leases that require the lessee to
own a significant portion of the leased asset, such as equipment, the lessee
must recognize an interest expense or an amortization expense. Thus, the proposed new standard will affect both the income statement
and the balance sheet.
Under the proposed lease standard,
lessors must classify leases into two
categories: operating lease accounting or the receivable and residual approach.
The lessor will use the operating lease accounting if the lessee uses an
insignificant of the lease asset. However, if the lessee uses a significant
portion of the leased asset, then the lessor will use the receivable and
residual approach. With the receivable and residual approach, the lessor
“sells” part of the lease asset to the lessee, and the lessor classifies the
“sold” asset as receivable. The lessor will record the unsold portion of the
asset as residual. With this approach, the lessor must recognize profits and
losses upfront on the portion that is “sold.” This means that the residual amount
will be deferred profit and a part of the carrying value.
The implementation of the proposed
new lease standard may be difficult for companies. The proposed new standard
will affect the decision making process for lessees. The lessee may consider
buying the asset, instead of leasing it. The cost of upgrading software,
training employees, and hiring experts to train may be an additional cost for
companies. The lessee could violate the debt covenants due to the increase in
liabilities. This violation may cause the agency problems.
The goal of financial statements is
to provide a faithful representation of a company's financial position. The
information provided in the financial statements should be transparent. The
proposed new lease standard seems to address the user’s need for transparency.