Question

I would like each student to report to the class a current event pertaining to the subject matter they studied in the course. The news will be posted by the student in the discussion forum section. You can find related topics in any business section of a national newspaper, in one of the many financial publications, or on the internet. The Wall Street Journal, The Financial Times, Fortune, Time, and Newsweek are some other sources for information. Please provide the link to the news item, why you found it interesting, and how it relates to a concept you studied in this course. (anything to do with financial accounting, such as bank of canada exploring digital currency or the financial crsis at boeing. ) - Has to be recent and please provide a source! ----So basically find a financial news source such as facebook opening libra, and write why its interesting and how it relates to financial accounting

Answer 1

Solution

The Financial Accounting Standard Board (FASB) has introduced new standard for leases accounting which is all set to take effect from 1st January 2019. The US public companies needs to comply to this new requirement which affects all entities across all industries that signs a lease contract or deal with lease agreements. The ASC (Accounting Standard Codification) Topic 842 changes the rules on the leases accounting and disclosures. The change will affect the all leases including the real estate leases and equipment leasing.

The new rules on the accounting and reporting of leases involves lot of complexity. The article "Common pitfalls in lease Disclosures" reported by Deloitte in Wall Street Journal at this juncture helps all organizations to understand the common mistakes committed by them while accounting and reporting leases. The link is enclosed as under:-

https://deloitte.wsj.com/cfo/2019/03/11/common-pitfalls-in-lease-disclosures/

The new rules on the leases disclosure will be helpful to the investors or the readers of the report to understand the complete lease transactions that takes place in an organizations. Earlier, the partial lease transaction were disclosed which does not include the information about the future leases obligations. The objective of new changes in rules is to make the organizations to consider materiality of disclosures.