Question :

You have graduated with your business degree and currently commenced work with a leading firm of public accountants. A number of very important clients rely on extensive leasing arrangements and have expressed concern regarding proposed changes in accounting for leases. The IASB and AASB are presently working together to prepare a new standard for the recognition, measurement and presentation of leases.

Requirements

While the partners of the firm have been able to communicate with clients about this issue, they have asked you to prepare a background report for presentation to other staff members to outline:

• a concise history of Australia's policy for accounting for leases before the acceptance of IFRS;
• the current approach taken by Australian IFRS on the question of recognition, presentation and measurement of leases, and the reasoning behind this approach;
• Future global developments relating to changing the IASB's existing accounting standard for accounting for leases and how they might affect Australian reporting entities.

The report is to have a maximum word length of 1,000 words