Do You Have a Technical Question for the GASB?

Do You Have a Technical Question for the GASB?

At the GASB, our mission is not only to establish accounting and financial reporting requirements for U.S. state and local governments, but also to help educate our stakeholders on those standards and help stakeholders implement them. Today, I’d like to highlight a service the GASB offers that can help when you have questions about how to apply our standards.

The GASB provides a number of resources to help stakeholders understand our standards and put them in practice. In addition to speeches webinars, and videos, we offer examples and background in our authoritative guidance to give perspective and context. Sometimes the facts and circumstances in a given situation don’t seem to fit and a stakeholder may still have questions about how the guidance applies.

When you have these kinds of questions, the GASB is here help. Technical Inquiries is a service offered by the GASB in which staff respond to questions received from stakeholders about GASB standards and how they apply to actual situations within specific governments. Each year, our staff responds to more than one thousand questions.

With implementation of the lease accounting standards in full swing it is no surprise that in 2022 questions on leases topped the list of topics with more than 300 inquiries. We also received numerous questions about fiduciary funds, nonexchange transactions, pensions, and other topics.

Top 2022 Technical Inquiry Topics

·?????Leases – 311 questions

·?????Fiduciary Funds – 50 questions

·?????Nonexchange Transactions – 38 questions

·?????Subscription-Based Information Technology Arrangements – 37 questions

·?????Pensions—Employers – 36 questions

·?????Capital Assets/Infrastructure – 36 questions

We encourage inquirers with questions that include requests for interpretation of accounting standards to use the Technical Inquiry System at www.gasb.org. (which may be accessed by clicking the Technical Inquiry System menu item under the Project tab on the GASB website).

Answering these inquiries is an essential part of our mission and gives the Board and staff a better perspective on the issues facing your government. Questions submitted through the technical inquiry system are often ultimately included in our Implementation Guides and Updates. The proposed Implementation Guidance Update that is currently out for comment (Exposure Draft, Implementation Guidance Update—2023) includes a number of questions that came to us in just this way.

I’d like to take this opportunity to brag on the GASB team for just a moment, I am pleased to let you know that overall satisfaction with technical inquiry responses in 2022 was over 98 percent. So, kudos to our great team for their exemplary work this year.

Here is a comment a repeat technical inquiry system user shared with us earlier this year: “I have probably written this before, but we appreciate the service being offered and find GASB always willing to help answer questions in a timely basis, which is greatly appreciated.”

Please reach out to us directly through the technical inquiry page on the website when you have a situation that requires individual attention and direction. We are always happy to hear from you—and I can guarantee you that if you share your question with us, you’ll get a prompt response.

Answers to more general questions (for example, status of a current GASB project or effective date of a Statement) can be found on the GASB’s website, www.gasb.org, or by contacting staff members via email.

Season’s greetings and all the best in 2023.

Joel Black

GASB Chair