New Federal Lease Accounting Guidelines

The Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board (FASAB) and the Accounting & Auditing Policy Committee (AAPC) had released certain guidelines with regard to Federal entities, which mainly comprise:

• Accounting standards implementation
• Lease related amendments
• Advances from non-federal sources

While the AAPC had proposed Implementation Guidance for Leases, FASAB had proposed Omnibus Amendments to Leases-Related Topics, which is a Statement of Federal Financial Accounting Standards (SFFAS). All these proposals were included in a Joint exposure draft for which online comments were invited through Feb 5th on fasab@fasab.gov.

The Technical Release proposal includes 99 Implementation Q&A, along with requirement application guidelines for SFFAS 54, Leases and attempts to share necessary insights, do away with obsolete disclosure requirements, and append small technical corrections, basis the original assumption of omnibus amendment proposals becoming an Accounting standard.

Earlier as well, FASAB had proposed addressing the financial presentation of deposit fund amounts (in component entity financial statements) which are received from non-federal sources against an advance. Purpose was to sort and clearly segregate the non-federal non-entity Fund Balance with Treasury (FBWT). And, as a transparent practice, the board had requested online comments on the draft release by Jan 6, 2021 on fasab@fasab.gov.