Proceedings

Moreover, the legal documents supporting the contracts (especially invoices)
are recorded exactly in the form they have.
There is however a significant source of differentiation between the accounting and
fiscal standards, namely the lease-back contracts. According to the OMPF 3055/2009
(sequel of OMPF 2374/2007), the procedure of recording in the books of lease-back
contracts materialized in financial leasing is limited to the accounting component
where the current account is debited and the corresponding long-term debt account is
credited. If this is the case, its accounting reflection somewhat lacks covering in the
related documents or, to put it differently, the documents drafted lack their
transposition in the books in accordance with their formal content. A lease-back
transaction is a sale followed by the reception of the asset in financial leasing
conditions – it is actually a leasing contract where the user is also the supplier.
Fiscally speaking, the sale is reflected in the invoice, which includes an income equal
to the sale price, as well as the afferent collected VAT (if any). This income is taxable
on the sale date, even when no record of it appears in the company books. Also, if this
income is fiscally recognized, it should be confronted with the expense that generated
it, meaning with the net book value of the sold asset and taken over in leasing. Under
normal circumstances, this expense is deductible. Neither the income, nor the expense
is recorded in the books, but they are both fiscally recognized. After the taking over of
the asset in leasing, its book value remains the same as before, since the fixed assets
and depreciation accounts were not involved at all in the recording of the transaction
in the books. The tax value of the asset, that is the value considered when calculating
deductible depreciation is equal to the contract input value, that is the VAT exclusive
price for which the asset was “sold” to the leasing company.
The rule employed when recording asset sales in company books seems rather clear.
The OMPF 3055/2009 provides as such the recognition criteria of IAS 18, which
apply to such transactions. Let us not forget that IAS 18 was created in a business
environment that often employs rules that we have not yet taken sufficiently in. Thus,
the first provision states that an asset sale income is recognized by the seller if it
complies with several requirements, the first of which is the transfer to the buyer of
significant risks and benefits associated with the ownership right over that asset.
What happens if the sale is paid in installments and the ownership transfer depends on
the payment of the last installment? The accounting solution essentially depends on
the manner in which the requirements imposed by the standard are thought to be met.
If, for instance, the seller has reasons to believe that he will have difficulties in
recovering the entire amount of money, the sale is not certain and the income cannot
be immediately recognized. If this is the case, the accounting treatment could resort to
spacing out or even deferring the income (and, hence, the expense), unlike the tax
treatment, which is limited to the recording in the books of the supporting documents
(invoice). This is the difference between accounting and taxation.
The categorizing of securities as long or short-term securities does not lack fiscal
implications: as concerns long-term securities, any possible income from changes to
their value is not taxable as long as those assets are held by the company (the book
value thus differs from the tax value). Conversely, when they are categorized as shortterm,
their accurate valuation may generate book income that is taxed right away (the
book value remains equal to the tax value).
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