FINANCIAL REPORTING DEVELOPMENTS

摘要

In December 2018 the Financial Accounting Standards Board issued one more amendment to Topic 842 Leases. This amendment is a response to consideration of the costs and benefits of completing complex and costly analysis that results in little information to financial statement users. Three issues are addressed: 1. Sales taxes and other similar taxes collected from lessees 2. Certain lessor costs 3. Recognition of variable payments for contracts with lease and nonlease components (ASU 2018-20, p. 1) Sales taxes represent either costs to lessees collected by lessors on behalf of local and state governments or costs of the lessor itself that the lease payment is designed to cover. When the lessee is merely acting as an agent, Topic 842 would have had the portion of the lease fee received representing sales tax excluded from the lease payment for accounting purposes. However, when the lessee is the obligor for sales taxes, then the lease payment would include the portion representing the sales taxes. The complication in evaluating this distinction is the differences in sales taxes across jurisdictions and the difficulty of accuracy due to frequently changing rates and scope. With ASU 2018-20 lessees are able to elect to consider all sales taxes as lessee costs in order to avoid the difficulty and costliness of evaluating sales taxes on an jurisdiction by jurisdiction basis. Making sales taxes excludable mirrors other accommodations that have already been made in Topic 606 revenue recognition guidance.