Proposed Changes Of Leases And Their Recognition On The Balance Sheet

Publicly traded companies are subject to the reporting and disclosure requirements of the Securities Exchange Commission (SEC). The laws that govern the securities industry were established to provide transparency to investors, creditors and shareholders alike. According to Hoyle, Schaefer & Doupnik, (2015) there are seven major disclosure requirements, the first being a five-year summary of operations to encompass sales, assets, income from continuing operations. Followed by a description of business activities, a three year summary of industry segments to include foreign and domestic operations, a list of company directors and executives, quarterly market price of common stock for the last two years, restrictions on the company’s ability to continue paying dividends, and finally, an analysis of the company’s financial condition, changes in the conditions and results of operation.

Section 1, titled terms lists the terms of the contract. The terms of the agreement must be definite and certain. All material terms must be included. The material terms allow a court to determine what the damages are in the event that one of the parties breach the terms of the contract. Section 1, of Exhibit D: Commercial Lease Agreement list the date the lease starts and the date the lease ends. It then lists the damages that the tenant may take if the landlord is not able to provide the leased premises in a timely manner. The section then goes on to state the terms of the renewal process. The process of renewing the lease is set with a written notice of 90 days. This process is definite and certain. The renewal provision then states that the terms shall be at the rental listed in the below sections of the agreement and upon the same covenants, conditions and provisions as contained in the lease agreement. Both the terms listed to lease the premises and to renew the contract is definite and certain and it lists the material terms.

SFAC No. 8 addresses the cost constraint on useful financial reporting, “Cost is a pervasive constraint that standard setters, as well as providers and users of financial information, should keep in mind when considering the benefits of a financial reporting requirement.” (SFAC No. 8 BC 3.47) However, the ability to place a dollar value and fully enumerate a cost or benefit is almost an impossible task for standard-setters. Additionally, there is no way to successfully identify and measure all of the economic consequences associated with a new standard. The FASB should be applauded though for advancing uniformity in accounting standards, however; uniform financial reporting suggests a one size fits all approach. “Smaller, non-publicly listed firms (and their auditors) argue that accounting standards are formulated mainly for larger, publicly traded firms” and that “compliance costs are disproportionately higher and the

Upon reviewing your post, the insights I gain are the importance of companies following the rules and regulations enforced by The Securities and Exchange commission (SEC). In addition to the (SEC) financial accounting are also monitor by the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) regulate the financial statements issued to shareholders. Zimmerman, J. L. (2014). I also realized the importance of companies making certain that the financial information posted, is accurate. By doing so, they help others such as stockholders and investors to make decisions that will be most beneficial to them.

The act requires management to disclose all material information or changes within their accounting processes. By requiring senior management to review the reports they are held accountable for the financial accounting of the firm, and procedures to prevent employees and other members within an organization from committing fraud or theft and management is legally responsible if material misstatements have been made. By making management accountable then they are less likely to commit fraud if faced with jail time. Management and stockholders frequently have different goals. Management often wishes to expand and use the company’s assets in different ways than a stockholder. Management’s accountability of the financial reports often helps encourage management to use company assets in appropriate ways. Disclosures were also a reduction in risk of fraud because all material information must be disclosed. By requiring this disclosure if a company’s net income increased this year due to a

CLASSIFICATION AND UNDERSTANDABILITY- FINANCIAL INFORMATION IS APPROPRIATELY PRESENTED AND DESCRIBED AND DISCLOSURES ARE CLEARLY EXPRESSED .

First of all, because this helps to prevent fraudulent practices. It makes easier for management, shareholders and potential investors to digest the information. It also allows comparing these statements against business competitors or the company’s own past statements to measure

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

Furthermore, the proposed ASU will impact all companies that report their financial statements under US GAAP. Some of the disclosure requirements are already part of the current Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosure requirements, but some disclosure requirements will reveal new information about reporting entities. PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) (Spang and Suplee, 2016) warns that “companies should consider how the additional disclosures may be utilized and interpreted by various stakeholders. In addition, compiling the necessary information, particularly for multinational corporations, may be challenging and may require updates to systems, processes, and controls”. Therefore, the implementation of the new standards on the early stages may require additional financial resources from the business entities.

FASB Accounting Standards Codification (ASC) 840-10-15 outlines the scope and scope exceptions for the Leases topic. ASC 840-10-15-6c provides the guidance to what constitutes a lease, and therefore governed under this topic.

In the article “Post-Enron Accounting Rule Requires Companies to Report Leases” by Peter Eavis, as the above title suggest, this requirement applies to public traded corporations, with this rule; operating leases, which were previously stated in the notes of financial statements should be reported it the actual balance-sheet of the corporation. Therefore, this allow stakeholders to better assess the financial obligations of a corporation.

In any business operations, full financial disclosure refers to the provision of the necessary information about a company for better decision making by the people accustomed. It is the financial revelation of a given company. There are some financial disclosures in any business that ensure proper understanding of financial statements to the financial readers, or potential auditors. Examples are the annual financial reports and the financial declarations of the company. The annual financial reports of the enterprise are very useful since they discloses the revenues recognized in the business, and the accountability of the inventories plus the income taxes accounted for during that period of operation. Second, is the disclosure of this financial statements which gives the actual revelation of the company 's stock options, liabilities and the effects of foreign currencies?! This disclosure includes the company 's balance sheet of the year, income statements and also the cash statements flows of that year. This information gives a proper understanding of the financial status users about the effects of inflation and price change on property and inventories (Berger, 2011).

The objective of this report is to present the factual findings of the audit of operating leases to the CFO and CEO of the XYZ limited. The XYZ’s 2015 financial statements has shown the material amount of operating leases and therefore needs particular attention during the course of audit. The auditing of assets held under the leasing agreements involves the verification under the guidelines of IAS 17 Leases. The current accounting standard for leasing is applicable for Australian companies has been undergoing changes and the new accounting standard for leasing has been introduced to enhance the credibility of financial statements disclosures in the financial statements. The new standard contains significant new provisions for which the author need to consider the marital effects on the truth and fairness of reporting. The report will analyze the difference between the old and new standard, investigate the effect on financial statements ratios, and cash flows, profit & loss and balance sheet.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board has issued for public comment two Exposure Drafts related to its disclosure framework project. The first exposure draft proposes amendments to Statement of Financial Accounting Concepts - Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting, Chapter 3 – Qualitative Characteristics of Useful Financial Information. The purpose of this proposed amendment is to clarify the concept of “materiality”. FASB defines materiality as, information is material if omitting it or misstating it could influence decisions that users make on the basis of the financial information of a specific reporting entity. In other words, materiality is an entity-specific aspect of relevance based on the nature or magnitude or both of the items to which the information relates in the context of an individual entity’s financial report. Consequently, the Board cannot specify a uniform quantitative threshold for materiality or predetermine what could be material in a particular situation.

According to Steve Collings (2010), the accounting treatment of leases has presented a lot of problems over the years for the particular profession. Problems are observed in the way some leases are being treated in a business’ income statement and statement of financial position. Although, as we are going to expand more on that, the major problem of accounting for leases according to Collings (2010), is the manipulation of financial statements by incorrectly categorizing ‘finance leases’ as ‘operating leases’. The main purpose of the essay is to discuss why accounting for leases has been so controversial and whether the new standard (IFRS16) will give a more meaningful picture of companies’ financial position for lessees.