GASB Advances Key Projects in September 2025 Meetings

The Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) met September 9–11, 2025, for a series of deliberations that advanced several major projects, including:

• Revenue and expense recognition
• Subsequent events
• Infrastructure assets
• Voluntary digital financial reporting

The Board also received an update from the AICPA and postponed its review of the technical plan to later in the month. Here’s what you need to know about the latest GASB developments.

Revenue and Expense Recognition

The Board made notable progress on its comprehensive revenue and expense recognition project, tentatively approving several key decisions.

• Approved methods: Output, time-elapsed, and other approaches are approved, provided they reflect the substance of the transaction. A cost recovery approach may be used temporarily if sufficient data is unavailable.
• Method selection: Governments must choose a method at the start of a binding arrangement and apply it consistently across similar obligations.
• Method selection: Changes in method will be applied prospectively unless correcting an error.

Additional clarifications include:

• Variable consideration: Rights of refund should be recognized as refund liabilities, reducing reported revenue.
• Rebates: Rebates will be evaluated to determine whether they function as refunds or expense transactions.

Subsequent Events

The Board continued to deliberate on its proposed Statement on subsequent events. It affirmed that no additional guidance is needed for comparative or reissued financial statements and that existing provisions from Statement No. 56 should not be carried forward.

The Board clarified that both short-term and long-term debt transactions should be identified as non-recognized events but chose not to expand the scope to include long-term financing activities. The effective date and transition provisions were approved with minor language adjustments.

Infrastructure Assets

One of the major topics of discussion, spanning nearly six hours, was infrastructure assets. The Board refined the definition of infrastructure assets and made several decisions to streamline disclosures. Key takeaways on this topic include:

• Modified approach: Governments using the modified approach must disclose use and identify the asset classes involved, but no longer need to describe the approach in detail or disclose retroactive reporting policies from Statement 34.
• Idle impaired assets: The Board upheld the requirement to disclose idle impaired assets and decided disclosures should be organized by network, not major class.
• Disclosures for Infrastructure Assets: Governments using historical cost net of depreciation must disclose:
• Historical Cost
• Accumulated depreciation
• Weighted-average age of assets exceeding 80% of useful life
• Additional segregation of these disclosures between infrastructure assets that have exceeded their estimated useful lives and those that have exceeded 80% of their estimated useful lives but not yet exceeded their estimated useful lives.

While maintenance and preservation expenses need not be disclosed, governments must disclose their policy for monitoring and maintaining infrastructure assets — though a negative disclosure is not required if no policy exists.

Voluntary Digital Financial Reporting

The Board reviewed modeling approaches for capital assets and MD&A within the digital taxonomy. Discussions focused on line-item documentation, granularity, and reporting unit structures. No formal decisions were made during this session.

Next Steps and Considerations

GASB continues to move toward clearer, more consistent guidance in key areas. These updates are designed to:

• Streamline compliance
• Reduce reporting complexity
• Improve transparency for stakeholders
• Support better financial decision-making

For example: changes to infrastructure disclosures, if approved, may simplify reporting for governments using the modified approach. Refined revenue and expense recognition methods may help ensure consistency across similar obligations. Overall, these developments should support more effective financial management and communication.

These updates are tentative, and governments should wait for the final standard to be issued before making any changes to their financial reporting and accounting. Our government professionals can help you navigate evolving standards and remain in compliance.