The Governmental Accounting Standards Board on Thursday issued a proposed statement on infrastructure assets that is up for public comment.
According to an exposure draft on the proposed statement, the primary objective of the project is to improve the financial reporting requirements for infrastructure assets, thus enhancing the consistency in their application and better meeting the information needs of financial statement users.
Based on input received from financial statement users and other stakeholders, the GASB is proposing guidance related to the definition, recognition, and measurement of infrastructure assets, as well as associated note disclosures and required supplementary information schedules.
Recognition and measurement
For infrastructure assets reported at historical cost net of accumulated depreciation, the exposure draft includes proposed guidance related to separately recognizing and depreciating components of those assets.
“Specifically, if a component of an infrastructure asset has a cost that is significant in relation to the total cost of the infrastructure asset and the estimated useful life of that component is substantially different from the estimated useful life of the infrastructure asset, that component should be considered a separate infrastructure asset in the determination of depreciation expense, including the determination of the estimated useful life, and for purposes of required disclosures in notes to financial statements,” the GASB said in an April 9 media release.
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The proposed guidance also emphasizes the requirement for governments to perform a periodic review of the estimated useful lives and salvage values used in the calculation of depreciation expense for the infrastructure assets.
As part of the transition to the proposal, the GASB says this requirement “would be applied to infrastructure assets held at the beginning of the reporting period in which this guidance is first implemented with any changes adopted as a result of that review being reported retroactively by restating beginning net position or fund net position, as applicable, for the cumulative effect, if any, of the change on prior periods.”
Note disclosures
The exposure draft also proposes to require governments to divide information about infrastructure assets in note disclosures by network—and for governments with a policy for monitoring the maintenance and preservation of their infrastructure assets to briefly describe that policy in notes to financial statements.
For infrastructure assets reported at historical cost net of accumulated depreciation, governments would also be required to disclose by network of infrastructure assets the historical cost, accumulated depreciation, and historical-cost weighted-average age of infrastructure assets that have exceeded 80% of their estimated useful lives, the GASB says. For this disclosure, governments would separate those infrastructure assets that have reached 100% of their estimated useful lives from infrastructure assets that have exceeded 80% of their estimated useful lives but haven’t yet reached 100% of their estimated useful lives.
Comment period ends in June
Stakeholders are asked to review the exposure draft and provide input to the GASB by June 26. Comments may be submitted either in writing and addressed to the Director of Research and Technical Activities, who may be emailed at director@gasb.org, or through an electronic input form.
A series of public forums on the exposure draft has been scheduled to enable stakeholders to share their views with the GASB. Additional information is available in the document.
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