Leases, Sym, Intermediate Accounting II

Since, such an agreement will be regarded as an Operating Lease and not a Capital Lease; this lease will not be reported on the company’s balance sheet. Keeping the lease off the balance sheet would make our financial ratios appear more attractive (lower debt/asset ratio) than otherwise. Hence, such a setup provides the advantage of financing the deal as an off-Balance Sheet item.

Case 11-6 deals with Lessee Ltd., a company that operates in Britain and uses IFRS. The question in this case is how to classify a lease that Lessee, Ltd. acquired from Lessor Inc. The accounting standard that deals with leases under IFRS is IAS 17. IAS 17 was originally issued in September 1982 and was reissued in December 2003. It classifies leases as either finance leases or operating leases. Finance leases make it so that the lessee recognizes an asset and a liability and the lessor recognizes a receivable, basically transferring all the risks and benefits of ownership. Under operating leases, the lessor still recognizes the asset and the lessee recognizes an expense.

A. Firms with lower effective tax rates were found to have a higher proportion of leased debt to total assets than did firms with higher effective tax rates. Some lease agreements are in-substance long-term installment purchases of assets that have been structured to gain tax or other benefits to the parties. Since leases may take different forms, it is necessary to examine the underlying nature of the original transaction to determine the appropriate method of accounting for these agreements. That is, they should be reported in a manner that describes the intent of the lessor and lessee rather than the form of the agreement.

The second sub-type lease is a sales-type lease. This lease should be recorded as a sales-type lease when there is a manufacturer’s or dealer’s profit or loss. This type of lease implies that the leased asset is an item of inventory and the seller is earning a gross profit on the sale. The sales-type lease is often occur when manufacturer or dealer using leasing as a means of marketing their products. For sales-type leases, because the critical event is the sale, the initial direct costs associated with obtaining the lease agreement are written off when the sale is recorded at the inception of the lease. These costs are disclosed as selling expenses on the income statement.

To classify the arrangement, ASC 840-10-25-29 states that “If at its inception a lease meets any of the four lease classification criteria in paragraph 840-10-25-1, the lease shall be classified by the lessee as a capital lease.” On the contrary, if none of the criteria is meet, the lease should be classified as an operating lease (ASC 840-10-25-30)

The determination of whether an arrangement is or contains a lease is based on the substance of the arrangement and requires an assessment of whether the fulfilment of the arrangement is dependent on the use of a specific asset or assets and whether the arrangement

How should NeedsSpace account for the two obligations noted as provisions in the lease agreement?

While working on a consulting engagement, a supervisor in the team has given an assignment. The client is a regional trucking company. A new customer has approached the client with an opportunity that would require 120 trailers—20 more than the trucking company currently owns. The client is uncertain how long the relationship with the customer may last, but the deal has the potential for significant growth. The supervisor has asked a research to be conducted on leases and lease structure issues on the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) website, in particular the current practice and thought related to direct financing, sales type, and operating leases. This paper is a memo addressed to the supervisor that summarizes

b. Any guarantee by the lessee (including by a third party related to the lessee) of the residual value at the expiration of the lease term, whether or not payment of the guarantee constitutes a purchase of the leased property. If the lessor has the right to require the lessee to purchase the property at termination of the lease for a certain or determinable amount, that amount shall be considered a lessee guarantee of the residual value. If the lessee agrees to make up any deficiency below a stated amount in the lessor 's realization of the residual value, the residual value guarantee to be included in the minimum lease payments shall be the stated amount, rather than an estimate of the deficiency to be made up.

4. How might the ED’s proposed lessor accounting influence, if at all, the lessor’s preferences for particular lease provisions in the BonneSante leases?

A sales-type lease is defined in ASC 840-10-25-43(a) and states, “A lease is a sales-type lease if it gives rise to manufacturer’s or dealer’s profit (or loss) to the lessor (that is, the fair value of the leased property at lease inception is greater or less than its cost or carrying amount, if different) and meets either of the following conditions,” and the conditions it must meet are the conditions for a capital lease and the payments must be reasonably predictable and no important uncertainties about the payments should be present as stated in ASC 840-10-25-42. The conditions for classifying a capital lease are described in ASC 840-10-25-1. The journal entries would differ from the others as it would include sales revenue in the initial recording.

Why did the FASB embark on a project to change the reporting standard for leases? Under the current financial reporting standards for leases, an entity has to determine the classification of leases to account for by applying bright-line rules. This creates a potential opportunity for management to structure leases in order to achieve a specific desired accounting results (FASB). In addition, the current accounting model does not require operating leases to be recognized on the balance sheet. As a result, investors may underestimate the assets and liabilities that arise from leases and, thus, cause an uninformed decision of investment. According to a 2014 study on public company filings, nearly a trillion U.S. dollars were reported in

n or Redesign of the Legal Entity Scope Exception for Legal Entities Deemed to Be a Business — Determining Whether Substantially All of the Activities Either Involve or Are Conducted on Behalf of the Reporting Entity Scope Exception for an Entity Deemed to Be a Business — Determining Whether Financing Is Subordinated Additional Financial Support — Put and Call Options Business Scope Exception — Determining Whether More Than Half the Total of Equity, Debt, and Other Subordinated Financial Support Has Been Provided Lessee’s Determination of Whether a Capital Lease With an Entity Should Be Assessed Under the VIE Model in ASC 810-10 Consideration of Leasing Activities in Which the Legal Entity Is the Lessor

“in most cases the intention seems to be to create more precise definitions of “short-term rental,” to implement oversight

Under IFRS, lease classification depends on whether substantially all of the risks and rewards incidental to ownership of a