Discontinued operations and new FAS 4/2023: Updated approaches to accounting for long-term assets for sale and reporting information on discontinued operations

Introduction. Within their life cycle, some companies can change their business profile and terminate some unprofitable, counterproductive operations. Starting from 2025, organizations must disclose information on discontinued operations in financial statements under the new rules of FAS 4/2023. The purpose of the study is to review the new FAS provisions regarding the disclosure of information about discontinued operations, disclosure methodology and the examples of the Russian companies. Materials and Methods. The study referred to current legislation by analyzing the approaches proposed by national and foreign researchers, and analyzing the reporting data of public national companies. Generally accepted methods were used, including observation, description, comparison and analysis of data, as well as specialized methods, including interpretation and modeling. Results. The paper illustrates some scenarios for operation termination: sale of the property, sale of individual assets, refusal to continue operations, and reorganization. The paper looked at the principles of compiling and reporting assets and liabilities arising from operation termination, such as long-term assets for sale, including their impairment, and estimated liabilities. Special emphasis is placed on the disclosure of information on the results of discontinued operations in the financial statement. The paper also describes the advantages and disadvantages of the new approach proposed by FAS 4/2023. Conclusions. New approaches to the presentation and disclosure of information on discontinued operations will require changes to the accounting policies of enterprises and reporting software updates. The analysis of financial statements should also refer to revised approaches to assess development trends and work out some recommendations for sustainable growth. The areas of further scientific research should include clarifying the methodology for analyzing the reporting and performance of companies in connection with updating the reporting forms. This defines new articles and new approaches to reporting information on ongoing and discontinued operations.

Discontinued operations, sale of property, reorganization, financial statements, non-current assets for sale, impairment of assets, estimated liabilities, financial result of continuing and discontinued operations