FASAB Issues Concept Statement

The Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board (FASAB) has issued Statement of Federal Financial Accounting Concepts 6, Distinguishing Basic Information, Required Supplementary Information, and Other Accompanying Information. The Statement amends Statement of Federal Financial Accounting Concepts 2, Entity and Display, to provide guidance for use by the FASAB in determining whether information should be basic information, required supplementary information (RSI), or other accompanying information (OAI). Existing concepts provide the FASAB with guidance on what information should be reported to achieve the reporting objectives and identifies different methods that may be used to communicate it to readers, such as financial statements and management's discussion and analysis (MD&A). The Statement expands the existing conceptual framework to provide a process the FASAB may apply in selecting whether an item of information should be considered basic information, RSI, or OAI.

FASAB Issues New Statement of Federal Financial Accounting

The Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board (FASAB) has issued Statement of Federal Financial Accounting Standards (SFFAS) 33, Pensions, Other Retirement Benefits, and Other Post-employment benefits: Reporting Gains and Losses from Changes in Assumptions and Selecting Discount Rates and Valuation Dates. The standards in SFFAS 33 require:

• Gains and losses from changes in long-term assumptions used to estimate liabilities for federal employee pension and other retirement benefits, and other post-employment benefits to be displayed as discrete line items on the governmentwide entity's and the component entities' statements of net cost; and
  
• Components of the expense associated with such liabilities to be disclosed in notes to the financial statements. SFFAS 33 also provides standards for selecting the discount rate assumption and the valuation date for such liabilities.

Practices have varied regarding the discount rate for such liabilities and SFFAS 33 establishes one consistent approach for such rates for these liabilities The standards prescribed in SFFAS 33 are effective for periods beginning after Sept. 30, 2009. The statement is available on the FASAB website.