Costco Wholesale Corporation discloses the following in footnotes to its \(10-\mathrm{K}\) report relating to its leasing activities.

Operating leases are not reflected on-balance-sheet. In our analysis of a company, we often capitalize these operating leases, that is, add the present value of the future operating lease payments to both the reported assets and liabilities.

a. Compute the present value of Costco's operating lease payments assuming a \(6 \%\) discount rate and round the remaining lease term to the nearest whole year.

b. What effect does capitalization of operating leases have on Costco's total liabilities and total assets (it reported total liabilities and total assets of \(\$ 19,271\) million and \(\$ 30,283\) million, respectively)?

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At the end of 2013, future minimum payments... under noncancelable leases with terms of at least one year were as follows ($ millions): 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018. Thereafter. Total $ 189 175 167 160 153 1,753 $2,597