At a recent meeting of the accounting staff in your company, the controller raised the issue of using present value techniques to conduct impairment tests for some of the company’s fixed assets. Some of the more senior members of the staff admitted having little knowledge of present value concepts in this context, but they had heard about a FASB Concepts Statement that may be relevant. As the junior staff in the department, you have been asked to conduct some research of the authoritative literature on this topic and report back at the staff meeting next week.
Instructions
If your school has a subscription to the FASB Codification, go to aaahq.org/asclogin.cfm to log in and access the FASB Statements of Financial Accounting Concepts. When you have accessed the documents, you can use the search tool in your Internet browser to respond to the following items. (Provide paragraph citations.)
(a) Identify the recent concept statement that addresses present value measurement in accounting.
(b) What are some of the contexts in which present value concepts are applied in accounting measurement?
(c) Provide definitions for the following terms:
(1) Best estimate.
(2) Estimated cash flow (contrasted to expected cash flow).
(3) Fresh-start measurement.
(4) Interest methods of allocation.