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Lease Accounting Project Update

BY Bill Bosco
May 29, 2012

The latest FASB/IASB Lease Accounting Project meetings on Feb. 28 and 29 had as the main objective changing the lessee cost pattern to straight-line, similar to current GAAP. This is an urgent need as lessee cost pattern is the most significant unresolved issue holding up the issuance of a new exposure draft for the Lease Project. The Boards could not agree on any of the three lessee accounting approaches presented by the staff at the meetings, creating a potential impasse. To solve the problem, the Boards directed the staff to conduct outreach to get preparer and user feedback on the proposed approaches. The important news here is that after the meeting the Boards added a fourth approach that the ELFA has been recommending from the start of the Lease Project.

The next step is that the Boards plan to meet in June to decide on the lessee accounting approach to use in the new exposure draft.

The reason for the continued work on the lessee cost pattern is that most comment letters to the initial Lease Project Exposure Draft (“ED”) supported a straight-line cost pattern for what are classified as operating leases under current GAAP to better reflect a lease's economic effects in lessee financial statements.

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