GASB releases omnibus guidance on various standards

The Governmental Accounting Standards Board issued guidance Monday to address different accounting and financial reporting issues it identified, while state and local governments implemented and applied some of GASB’s earlier pronouncements or during the due process on other pronouncements.

The issues covered by GASB Statement No. 99, Omnibus 2022, include:

  • Accounting and financial reporting for exchange or exchange-like financial guarantees;
  • Certain derivative instruments that are neither hedging derivative instruments nor investment derivative instruments;
  • Clarification of certain provisions of:
    • Statement No. 34, Basic Financial Statements—and Management’s Discussion and Analysis—for State and Local Governments;
    • Statement No. 87, Leases;
    • Statement No. 94, Public-Private and Public-Public Partnership (PPP) and Availability Payment Arrangements;
    • Statement No. 96, Subscription-Based Information Technology Arrangements (SBITAs);
  • Replacing the original deadline for using the London Interbank Offered Rate (LIBOR) as a benchmark interest rate for hedges of interest rate risk of taxable debt, with a deadline of when LIBOR ceases to be determined by the ICE Benchmark Administration using the methodology in place as of Dec. 31, 2021;
  • Accounting for the distribution of benefits as part of the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP);
  • Disclosures related to non-monetary transactions;
  • Pledges of future revenues when resources are not received by the pledging government; and,
  • Updating certain terminology for consistency with existing authoritative standards.

The requirements of Statement 99 relating to the extension of the use of LIBOR, accounting for SNAP distributions, disclosures for non-monetary transactions, pledges of future revenues by pledging governments, clarifications of certain provisions in Statement 34, and terminology updates take effect upon issuance. The requirements related to leases, PPPs, and SBITAs take effect for fiscal years starting after June 15, 2022, and all reporting periods thereafter. The requirements related to financial guarantees and the other requirements related to derivative instruments are effective for fiscal years starting after June 15, 2023, and all reporting periods thereafter. GASB is encouraging stakeholders to do earlier application of the updates. Earlier application is also permitted by individual topics to the extent that all the requirements associated with an individual topic are implemented simultaneously.
“The omnibus is a host of technical corrections to either make pronouncements more consistent where we’ve seen some inconsistency in them or to help implement a current standard and help improve it a little bit,” GASB chair Joel Black told Accounting Today in a recent interview.  

The omnibus statement is available on GASB’s website.

GASB logo at headquarters in Norwalk, Connecticut
GASB headquarters in Norwalk, Connecticut

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