A final rule on accounting for leases is still several years in the future, but financial executives should brace themselves now for a new approach that will probably bring a rush of assets and liabilities onto the corporate balance sheet.
Leasing has been a sore point with regulators for years, since companies routinely structure leasing deals to evade bright-line accounting rules and keep assets off the balance sheet. The Securities and Exchange Commission put a bull’s eye on lease accounting rules when it published an extensive study in 2005 about off-balance-sheet accounting, calling for changes to accounting rules to produce financial ...