Reporting of right-to-use according to International Accounting standards Principles
The problem of whether and how to report in financial statements the right to use property and the obligation to pay rent or return the used property to the lessor after leasing is a fairly complex area in which it is difficult to find a generally acceptable accounting treatment. Especially for entities that are the subject of public interest, it is being demanded that in view of space comparability operative leasing should be reported on the side of lessee in the statement on financial position, both on the liabilities side, as well as on the assets side. Some possible approaches to reporting these facts are analyzed in this paper. At first the attention was paid to the simple operational lease contracts with a fixed term lease – there were compared the impacts of this way of reporting with the impact of existing accounting solutions. Moreover, the attention was also paid to the complicated lease contracts, such contracts with an option to extend contract or leasing contracts in which rents are divided into a fixed part and a part constructed variable. There were evaluated the effects of different views on the reporting of these contracts, in particular the views of the IASB and the FASB. Many preparers of accounts, however, justifiably concerned that this solution is quite complicated and the entity would be unduly burdensome due to the benefits achieved. This problem could be even more pronounced for smaller entities for potential adjustments to standards for SMEs. Such entities are often against mere change over to the principle based on the transfer of risk and commissions connected with leasing.