IFRS 16 leases: por que não?

Abstract

Discussions about off-balance sheet disclosure of lease transactions have dragged on for decades. However, an important milestone occurred in 2005, when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) disclosed $1.25 trillion in off-balance sheet leases by US lessee companies. This information led the FASB and the IASB to work together on the IFRS 16 project, aiming to increase comparability and transparency in the recognition of rights, obligations, and lease results. However, the Boards were unable to agree on a single lease accounting standard. Considering this, this research seeks to explore the economic reasons that would have led the FASB and the IASB to diverge in the IFRS 16 project. In this sense, I first analyze the effects of the Topic 842 adoption in the US based on the 894 financial statements from the years before (2018) and after (2019) Topic 842 adoption. The first results show that the recognition of the right of use asset (ROU) and the respective operating lease liability generated significant variations in the financial indicators. These variations were more prominent for the industries such as Air, Retail and Hotels and Restaurants. However, it was not possible to confirm that the market reacted to the changes introduced by Topic 842. Then, I estimated U.S. companies’ results had they adopted IFRS 16. The variations show that, on average, there would have been significant increases in EBIT, reductions in net income, and an increase in operating cash flow, yielding significant variations in financial ratios, namely in the debt/equity ratio, profitability ratios, and in the operating cash ratio. Finally, the results indicate that the US stock market incorporated the earnings’ decrease expectation, even though the FASB has followed a different way to recognize operating lease expenses. In this sense, the study suggests that FASB’s decision not to adopt the results recognition model according to IFRS 16 would have as a backdrop the desire to avoid lower results and, consequently, negative impacts on the market of U.S. companies.