Private Companies Win Reprieve for Lease Accounting Changes (1)

Privately held companies could get an extra year to track down rental details for backhoes, warehouses, storefronts, and other leased assets as they report them on balance sheets for the first time.

U.S. accounting rulemakers on July 17 voted unanimously to give privately held companies until 2021 to follow new lease accounting rules that public companies started adopting this year.

Their reasoning: the nuts and bolts of the leases standard turned out to be a much bigger undertaking than even large public companies with fleets of staff accountants anticipated. Set back-to-back with major changes to accounting for revenue recognition, which ...