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Advantages And Disadvantages Of Capital Lease

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The accounting standards are mainly created to make financial reporting credible and trustworthy. Companies in order to understate their liabilities can treat capital lease as operating lease and treat it as an off balance sheet item. This does not represent and true and fair value of the company's operations. A company can buy an asset on capital lease or operating lease if it wants to own that asset but does not have enough funds to buy it. Andrew Jones (2008) pointed out that purchasing an asset requires a huge capital outlay which restricts the company from investing in other projects. Capital or operating lease can be used to expand the business without much investment. Jones (2008) states that taking an asset on lease enables the company …show more content…

But this results in lot of confusion. When a company buys an asset using debt, the liability of the company increases and this alerts the investors and creditors of the company. In case of lease, though the company is allowed to use the asset, there is no debt that arises. But the company is committed to make lease payments over the lease term. Hence, many experts feel that operating lease should be stated as a liability.

Steve C Lim (2003), pointed out that irrespective of the accounting treatment, the rating agencies and finance textbooks consider long term lease as a debt obligation.

Amy Feldman (2002) noted that the just from the notes it is not possible to estimate the lease obligations. Many a times the operating lease is presented as a rental package in the statements, but under the present standards there are clear guidelines for a lease to be considered as operating lease.

Lessee

The accounting standard completely eliminates the difference between operating and capital lease. Lessee is supposed to record the right to use the asset and the lease payments that he has to make. Henry, E. and Holzmann, O.J., (2011) mentioned that the present value of lease payment is arrived at using the borrowing rate at which the lessee borrows or the rate the lessor

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