Dive Brief:

• The Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) has proposed extending to 2021 new lease accounting standards for private companies.
• The proposed deadline change is expected to be issued in mid-August, at which time it will be subject to a 30-day public comment period. 
• If the comments are supportive, as they’re expected to be, the official announcement of the new deadline will be released later this year, probably in October or November, according to a FASB spokesperson. 

Dive Insight:

FASB Is the Financial Accounting Standards Board and it adopted new lease accounting standards three years ago.

The new standards took effect at the beginning of this year for public companies.

Under the changes, operating leases must be included on companies’ balance sheet, just as capital leases are. Currently, companies include operating leases on their income statement and in the footnotes to their financials. 

Companies are discovering that the work to find and then extract data from their operating leases is extensive. Even mid-sized companies can have hundreds of these leases. The decision to delay implementation suggests FASB has heard companies' concerns.