The additional burdens associated with constantly tracking and remeasuring the “fair value” of leases of every kind, from a business’s office space to the photocopier down the hall, will hit businesses, and their employees and consumers, directly in the pocketbook. According to some critics, the accounting-rule change would distort the financial condition of businesses by accelerating expenses over a short timeline rather than reflect expenses over the life of a lease.
Many private parties have sent public comment letters to the FASB urging it and the IASB to conduct field tests to see how much it would really cost lessees and tenants to do all the work the new leasing rules would require. Congress has asked the FASB for a rigorous cost-benefit analysis and field testing to objectively assess the risks of the accounting changes. Neither has been undertaken. Yet all indications are that the U.S. and international accounting-standards boards are going ahead with only minor revisions to their proposal, which may be finalized next year.
In 1973 the Securities and Exchange Commission formally outsourced the job of writing accounting rules to the FASB. While the SEC is authorized to seek help from private standard-setting bodies on this issue, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 explicitly reminded the SEC that these quasi-government agencies can only “assist the Commission” in fulfilling the SEC’s own responsibility to establish accounting standards for publicly held companies.
If the SEC insists on relying so heavily on the FASB, then the FASB must adhere to the same requirements of transparency, public input, and cost-benefit analysis the SEC is required to meet. By law the SEC must analyze whether proposed rules will enhance efficiency, competition and capital formation, or whether the costs outweigh the benefits. The lease accounting proposal needs this analysis, but thus far the FASB and SEC have not even begun it. The SEC must increase its oversight of the FASB on this vital matter—or Congress will.
마지막 2문단의 내용이 뭘까요???
