'Heads Up' on FASB's pensions proposals

  • Heads Up Image

06 Apr 2006

Last week, the US Financial Accounting Standards Board issued its Exposure Draft Employers' Accounting for Defined Benefit Pension and Other Postretirement Plans.

The ED proposes amendments to FASB Statements No. 87, 88, 106, and 132(R) to require, among other things, that a company that sponsors a postretirement benefit plan fully recognise, as an asset or liability, the over-funded or under-funded status of its benefit plan in its balance sheet. The proposal is designed to partially tackle certain important deficiencies the FASB finds in today's pension accounting:
  • Changes in a plan's assets and its benefit obligation are not recognised as they occur.
  • Important information about postretirement plans is relegated to the footnotes rather than being recognised in the financial statements.
Key concepts of this ED are summarised in a new (PDF 128k), published by Deloitte & Touche LLP (USA).

Correction list for hyphenation

These words serve as exceptions. Once entered, they are only hyphenated at the specified hyphenation points. Each word should be on a separate line.