Accounting considerations
If your New Zealand entity is required to prepare financial statements in accordance with Generally Accepted Accounting Practice (GAAP), you need to assess the potential accounting and financial reporting implications of major disruptive social and political changes and events, as well as significant biological and environmental events. However, forecasting the magnitude and duration of their economic impact is often challenging.
Accounting estimates
Accounting estimates rely on your judgmental assumptions, which must be based on a reasonable interpretation of conditions or events known as of the requisite measurement date. For example, accounting standard NZ IAS 1 requires developing accounting estimates involving the use of judgment based on the latest available, reliable information.
If you have made an accounting estimate based on a certain set of circumstances, and the situation changes, you may need to change the estimate; this also applies if you receive new information or new developments arise. This is not a new requirement. For example, reporting entities routinely review estimates regarding an asset’s useful life as part of the year end reporting process.
Recent changes in international economic and fiscal policies—particularly increased tariffs and other trading restrictions —may have implications for a variety of accounting estimates, including, but not limited to:
- impairment of indefinite-lived intangible assets, including goodwill, under NZ IAS 36
- impairment of finite-lived intangibles and long-lived tangible assets, including right-of-use assets
- impairment of receivables under NZ IFRS 9, if your customers or borrowers may
be potentially impacted by the fiscal and economic policy changes
- estimates of fair value in accordance with NZ IFRS 13
- the realisability of deferred tax assets under NZ IAS 12.
Subsequent events in the current political environment
While you don’t need to consider every possible future scenario when developing estimates, you can’t exclude certain situations from the estimation process due to uncertainty if they’re reasonable and supported by known information at the estimation date. Instead, the uncertainty should impact the weighting that a reasonable and supportable future scenario receives in your estimation process.
For example, the recent increase in tariffs is a major economic policy position promoted by the current US administration during the 2024 presidential election campaign. This means entities may need to consider whether economic scenarios that incorporate the direct and indirect impact of U.S.−imposed tariffs (including the potential for retaliatory tariffs) are reasonable and supportable as of any post-election estimation dates.
Entities should also continue to carefully monitor developments in the economic and fiscal policy priorities both within the US and internationally.
Contract modifications
If your organisation, your customers or your borrowers have experienced negative economic impact from changes in international fiscal and economic policies, you may need to modify your existing contracts. Those modifications may have accounting and financial reporting implications, including:
- price concessions or other modifications to revenue contracts under NZ IFRS 15 Revenue from Contracts with Customers
- rent concessions or other modifications to leases under NZ IFRS 16
- debt modifications, which may constitute troubled debt modifications, under NZ IFRS 9.
Debt classification
If you expect your organisation will be significantly impacted by potential changes in international governments’ economic and fiscal policies, you may need to consider whether such changes result in debt covenant violations. For example, many lending agreements include “material adverse change” provisions that render debt immediately callable by the lender. You should evaluate if any debt covenant violations could have occurred as of the financial reporting date and whether they impact the classification of the debt as a current or noncurrent liability on your balance sheet. This analysis should also inform your entity’s ability to continue as a going concern.
Disclosure considerations
Going concern
The guidance in NZ IAS 1 Presentation of Financial Statements requires entities to evaluate their ability to continue as a going concern within one year after the financial statements are either issued or made available to be issued. You must provide disclosures if there is substantial doubt about your entity’s ability to continue as a going concern or if your organisation’s plans alleviate that doubt. When determining these two factors, you may need to evaluate whether your organisation has sufficiently considered the impact of existing changes (or reasonably foreseeable changes) to international economic policies based on known or knowable information as of the financial statement date.
You also need to exercise judgment when weighting different scenarios in the current environment. For example, less weight may be assigned to scenarios based on actions that have been proposed but not yet enacted through executive order or legislation, such as tariffs or changes in government grants and other fiscal programmes, than to scenarios based on changes that have already been enacted.
Accounting judgements
NZ IAS 1 requires and entity to disclose, along with material accounting policy information or other notes, the judgements, apart from those involving estimations, that management has made in the process of applying the entity’s accounting policies and that have the most significant effect on the amounts recognised in the financial statements.
Entities may need to evaluate whether it is necessary to include specific disclosures related to risks and uncertainties introduced by the imposition of tariffs, suspension of certain government grants or other changing economic and fiscal policies, including disclosures for significant accounting estimates and vulnerabilities due to, for example, a reliance on key customers or suppliers.
MD&A and Risk Factors
In addition to disclosures in their financial statements, public entities may need to provide additional disclosures about the impact of changing economic and fiscal policies to financial market regulators. For example, in New Zealand this might include the revision of previous earnings guidance provided in the NZX.
