Question

E 20-18 Classifying accounting changes.

Indicate with the appropriate letter the nature of each situation described below:

Change in principle reported retrospectively

  Change in principle reported prospectively

 Change in estimate

 Change in estimate resulting from a change in principle

  Change in reporting entity

 Not an accounting change

Exercise 20-18

 1. Change from decreasing balance depreciation to straight-line.

2. Change in the approximated useful life of office equipment.

  3. Technological improvement which renders useless a patent with an

  unamortized cost of $45,000.

 4. Change from finding lower of cost or market for stocks by the

  individual item approach to the aggregate approach.

  5. Change from LIFO stock costing to weighted-average stock costing.

  6. Settling a legal case for under the sum accrued earlier as a loss

  contingency.

7. Including in the combined fiscal reports a subsidiary purchased many

years ago which was properly not included in earlier years.

  8. Change by a store from revealing bad debt expenditure on a pay-as-you-

go basis to the allowance method.

 9. A change of specific production overhead costs to stock which earlier

were expensed as incurred to more accurately measure cost of goods sold. (Either method is typically accepted.)

 10. Pension plan assets for a specified benefit pension plan having a rate of

return more than the sum expected.

*Error correction: change from an unacceptable method to GAAP.