Tentative Board Decisions

Tentative Board decisions are provided for those interested in following the Board's deliberations. All of the reported decisions are tentative and may be changed at future Board meetings.

Wednesday, December 14, 2016 FASB Board Meeting

Clarifying the scope of Subtopic 610-20 and accounting for partial sales of nonfinancial assets. The Board discussed the following items:
  1. Comments received from external reviewers on a staff draft of the forthcoming Accounting Standards Update on Other Income—Gains and Losses from the Derecognition of Nonfinancial Assets (Subtopic 610-20): Clarifying the Scope of Asset Derecognition Guidance and Accounting for Partial Sales of Nonfinancial Assets
  2. Analysis of the costs and benefits of the Board's decisions
  3. Permission to ballot.
Transition for Previous Disposals of a Business

The Board decided to amend the transition guidance for previous disposals of a business. The application of the revised definition of a business in the forthcoming Accounting Standards Update, Business Combinations (Topic 805): Clarifying the Definition of a Business, may result in a transaction that was previously considered the disposal of a business to be considered the disposal of an asset. An entity should not reinstate goodwill for previous disposals of a business when applying the forthcoming Update on asset derecognition.

Analysis of the Costs and Benefits

The Board concluded that it has received sufficient information and analysis to make an informed decision on the issues presented. The Board also concluded that the benefits of the amendments justify the related costs.

Permission to Ballot

The Board directed the staff to draft a final Accounting Standards Update for vote by written ballot.


Revenue recognition of grants and contracts by not-for-profit entities. The Board discussed ways to improve the existing guidance for two issues:
  1. Distinguishing between those grants and similar contracts that should be accounted for as nonreciprocal transactions (contributions) and those that should be accounted for as reciprocal transactions (exchanges)
  2. Distinguishing between conditional and unconditional contributions.
Issue 1: The Board decided to clarify and refine existing guidance in Subtopic 958-605 by adding paragraphs that would clarify the scope of the Subtopic as well as illustrative examples.

Issue 2: The Board did not make any technical decisions. The Board directed the staff to pursue an approach where a contribution would be conditional if an explicit right of return exists and there is a substantive barrier that must be overcome. The Board directed the staff to provide further analysis, including examples, to determine whether a substantive barrier to entitlement exists.


Disclosure framework—entity's decision process. The Board reviewed a summary of comments received on the proposed Accounting Standards Update, Notes to Financial Statements (Topic 235): Assessing Whether Disclosures Are Material, and the proposed amendments to FASB Concepts Statement, Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting: Chapter 3—Qualitative Characteristics of Useful Financial Information. The Board also discussed the objectives for a public roundtable meeting on the disclosure framework.

Next Steps

The Board plans to schedule a public roundtable meeting to discuss the disclosure framework entity's decision process and the Board's decision process using the disclosure reviews on four topics (fair value measurement, defined benefit plans, income taxes, and inventory).