Greetings, Is there a way to make sense of the Sale and Leaseback concept and differences in treatment between GAAP and IASB? I have read a page several times and I am just not getting it. Thank you in advance.
Under US GAAP, the “Sale” takes the assets off the balance sheet, and you receive your consideration in cash, boot, or stock. The “Leaseback” becomes a lease which can either take one of two different forms- capital or operating leases. Operating leases are purely off-balance sheet, giving you the ability to expense the lease payments as rental expenses, which are tax deductible, and the assets never appear on either side of the B/S. This can help lower taxable income, but you don’t benefit from the depreciation tax shields since you can’t claim ownership of the assets even though you still use them. Also, your ROA may increase significantly, since fewer assets boosts this number, so of course some companies whose loans are tied to ROA may favor this. Capital leases on the other hand cannot be expensed, but they show up on the asset and liability side of the B/S, so you get the benefit of depreciation and interest tax shields from the asset and interest bearing liablity respectively at the same time.