• IAS 17, Leases

History

• IFRIC D3 Determining Whether an Arrangement Contains a Lease was issued 15 January 2004
• Comment Deadline 19 March 2004
• Press Release on IFRIC D3 (PDF 30k).
• IFRIC 4 Issued 2 December 2004
• Effective for annual periods beginning on or after 1 January 2006
• Press Release on IFRIC 4 (PDF 38k).

In recent years arrangements have developed that do not take the legal form of a lease but which convey rights to use assets in return for a payment or series of payments. Examples of such arrangements include:

• outsourcing arrangements;
• telecommunication contracts that provide rights to capacity; and
• take-or-pay and similar contracts, in which purchasers must make specified payments regardless of whether they take delivery of the contracted products or services.

The Interpretation specifies that an arrangement that meets the following criteria is, or contains, a lease that should be accounted for in accordance with IAS 17 Leases:

• Fulfilment of the arrangement depends upon a specific asset. The asset need not be explicitly identified by the contractual provisions of the arrangement. Rather it may be implicitly specified because it is not economically feasible or practical for the supplier to fulfil the arrangement by providing use of alternative assets.
• The arrangement conveys a right to control the use of the underlying asset. This is the case if any of the following conditions is met:
  • (i) the purchaser in the arrangement has the ability or right to operate the asset or direct others to operate the asset (while obtaining more than an insignificant amount of the output of the asset).
  • (ii) the purchaser has the ability or right to control physical access to the asset (while obtaining more than an insignificant amount of the output of the asset).
  • (iii) there is only a remote possibility that parties other than the purchaser will take more than an insignificant amount of the output of the asset and the price that the purchaser will pay is neither fixed per unit of output nor equal to the current market price at the time of delivery.