Understanding Impairment Of Assets With IAS 36 Standard Essay.

Discuss about the Corporate Accounting, The asset impairment is debited as a loss or expenditure during making the journal entry and is subjected to credit for the underlying asset.

An asset is said to be impaired when it has lower market price in comparison to its value recorded in the balance sheet of a business entity. The asset impairment is debited as a loss or expenditure during making the journal entry and is subjected to credit for the underlying asset. The net difference between the carrying value and the market value of an asset attributes to the impairment value (Alexander and Archer, 2008) . In this context, the present essay emphasizes on the need of undertaking an impairment test for an asset.

The IASB (International Accounting Standards Board) has adopted and implemented IAS 36 standard for identification and measurement of impaired value of an asset. As per the standard, a business entity is requires to conduct asset impairment testing whenever there is any identification of impairment except for the goodwill and intangible assets. The IAS 36 standard is applicable largely for all the assets including property, land, equipments, goodwill and intangible assets. The standard, however, still not applies to non-current assets for selling, financial assets measured at fair value and inventories (Epstein and Jermakowicz, 2008). The business entities identify the need of impairment testing through their analysis at the close of each accounting period. The indication of asset impairment exists when its carrying value is higher than its amount recoverable. The carrying value of an asset refers to price at which its value is recorded in the balance sheet through reducing the net depreciation and the loss arising from its impairment. The amount recoverable from an asset is either its selling price also referred to as its fair value obtained through deducting the cost of disposal or its value in use which ever is higher. The value in use is the current value of the cash inflows expected to be realized from an asset (IAS 36 — Impairment of Assets, 2017).

The identification of the asset impairment is gathered from various external and internal sources as per this standard. The external sources include the reduction in its present market value, technological, legal or economical changes, rise in interest rate or in the case if the total asset base is greater that its market capitalization. On the other hand, internal sources of a company include physical damage, unused asset or being restructured, low economic value in comparison to its expected value. Thus, the presence of any of this situation indicates that an asset should be tested for impairment for reviewing its useful life, accounting method for calculating deprecation or its remaining value. Also, the asset need not be tested for impairment if it’s used value or fair value less cost of disposal is higher than its net carried amount. The amount to be recovered from an asset is treated as its value in use if its fair value obtained after deduction of disposal cost cannot be calculated (IAS 36 — Impairment of Assets, 2017).

IAS 36 Standard for Asset Impairment Testing

However, in the case if amount recoverable from an asset is less that its net carrying value, them the loss arising from asset impairment is attributed to be impairment loss and is treated as an expense. The cash-generating assets are also tested for impairment if the amount to be recovered from its individual asset cannot be determined. The cash-generating unit (CGU) is regarded to be smallest group of assets that is capable of delivering the cash inflows and does not have any relation to the other group of assets. The goodwill is tested for impairment on an annual basis irrespective of the fact that there is nay indication of asset impairment. The goodwill is attributed to its overall cash-generating units and the net carrying value of the overall unit is compared with its amount recoverable for conducting its impairment test. The goodwill is not regarded to be impaired if the amount to be recovered from the CGU’s is higher that net carrying value of the group of assets. However, in the opposite situation of net carrying value greater than then amount recoverable from CGU’s, the goodwill indicates impairments and the impairment loss is realized (Walton and Aerts, 2006).

The IAS 36 standard is developed for ensuring that all tangible and intangible assets should not be carried at higher value than the amount to be realized from them in the future. As such, there exists need for testing the assets for impairment that have any indication of decrease in their market value and annually for intangible assets. The indication of nay asset impairment should be followed by recognizing its recoverable amount. The loss arising from asset impairment should be treated as expense in the profit and loss statement and also a business entity is required to provide complete information reading its asset impairment in its financial reports (Delaney and Whittington, 2007). Thus, the process of asset impairments begins with identifying the indicators of impairments, estimating the cash inflows, testing the assumption made and comparing them with the market results. The impairment test except the intangible assets can be done at any time of the financial year when ever there occur any identification of the asset value subjected to impairment. However, the testing should be done at the same time during each financial period when there is decrease in the estimated cash inflows to be realized from an asset. The asset that reports impairment greater than 50% should be disposed off before its expected disposal date (Impairment accounting – the basics of IAS 36 Impairment of Assets, 2017).

Thus, it can be said from the overall discussion of the report that an asset is tested for impairment when its estimated cash flows report losses or the presence of any situation that have resulted in the change of its value.

In this part a given practical problem will solved using the pro rata allocation of impairment loss and after that journal entries will passed. In the given example there is CGU of Gali Limited, Fine China and impairment has been calculated on the various assets. Impairment loss is divided only among the fixed assets not in current asset. Therefore inventory will not be included for the calculation impairment loss.

Impairment loss will equal to = Total Carrying Value of CGU Assets-Value in use

= $111,000.00

It is first divided wholly to the goodwill after that to the remaining fixed assets.

In the question the value of patent the fair value less cost is given as $681104.50 which is greater than as calculated in above table. So it should be adjusted.

Below is table of all the value of fixed assets after impairment.

(Impairment accounting – the basics of IAS 36 Impairment of Assets, 2017)

Journal Entries

Impairment loss on assets of CGU of Gali Ltd $ 111000.00

To impairment of Goodwill $37000.00

To Impairment Loss Patent $26895.50

To Impairment Loss Building $28864.79

To Impairment Loss fittings $18239.71

References

Alexander, D. and Archer, S. 2008. International Accounting/Financial Reporting Standards Guide. CCH.

Delaney, P. and Whittington, R. 2007. Wiley CPA Examination Review 2007-2008, Problems and Solutions. John Wiley & Sons.

Epstein, B. and Jermakowicz, E. 2008. Wiley IFRS 2008: Interpretation and Application of International Accounting and Financial Reporting Standards 2008. John Wiley & Sons.

IAS 36 — Impairment of Assets. 2017. [Online]. Available at: https://www.iasplus.com/en-us/standards/international/ias/ias36 [Accessed on: 21st September 2017].

Impairment accounting – the basics of IAS 36 Impairment of Assets. 2017. [Online]. Available at: https://www.ey.com/Publication/vwLUAssets/Impairment_accounting_the_basics_of_IAS_36_Impairment_of_Assets/$FILE/Impairment_accounting_IAS_36.pdf [Accessed on: 21st September 2017].

Walton, P. and Aerts, W. 2006. Global Financial Accounting and Reporting: Principles and Analysis. Cengage Learning EMEA.