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Exposure Draft 2010 and Its Affects on Lease Accounting

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Existing lease accounting standards require lessees to classify their lease contracts as either finance or operating leases. If a lease is classified as a finance lease, assets (and liabilities) are recognized in its statement of financial position. For an operating lease, the lessee simply recognizes lease payments as an expense over the lease term. This split into finance and operating leases has given rise to a number of problems.

The International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) and the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) has recently issued a combined exposure draft on Leases (ED 2010/09) resulting in a converged standard, in an attempt to rectify the weaknesses in the current standard. Significantly impacting how lessees …show more content…

The accounting model Proposed[5]

The exposure draft proposes a new accounting model for leases in which:

(a) A lessee would recognize an asset (the right-of-use asset) representing its right to use an underlying asset during the lease term, and a liability to make lease payments (paragraphs 10 and BC5–BC12). The lessee would amortize the right-of-use asset over the expected lease term or the useful life of the underlying asset if shorter. The lessee would incur interest expense on the liability to make lease payments.

(b) A lessor would apply either a performance obligation approach or a derecognition approach to account for the assets and liabilities arising from a lease, depending on whether the lessor retains exposure to significant risks or benefits associated with the underlying asset during or after the expected term of the lease (paragraphs 28, 29 and BC23−BC27).

The ED 2010/09 proposes a model in which a lessee would recognize a “right-of-use” asset representing its right to use the underlying asset, and a liability representing its obligation to pay lease rentals over the lease term. This includes lease contracts classified as operating leases under current requirements, which would significantly affect many users who adjust the amounts presented in financial statements to reflect assets and liabilities arising from operating

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