【正文】
tain events, such as plan amendments or actuarial gains and losses, were granted delayed balancesheet recognition. As a result, a plan’s funded status (plan assets minus obligations) was rarely reported on the balance sheet. SFAS 158 requires panies to report their plans’ funded status as either an asset or a liability on their balance sheets, which will cause reported pension liabilities to rise significantly. Although SFAS 158 also applies to postretirement benefit plans other than pensions and to notforprofit entities, the focus below is on forprofit businesses with defined benefit pension plans. BalanceSheet Reporting Under SFAS 158 Under SFAS 87, prepaid or accrued pension cost, which is the of a firm’s pension assets, liabilities, and unrecognized amounts, is reported on the balance sheet. SFAS 158 arguably improves financial reporting by more clearly municating the funded status of defined benefit pension plans. Previously, this information was reported only in the detailed pension footnotes. Under SFAS 158, panies with defined benefit pension plans must recognize the difference between the plan’s projected benefit obligation and its fair value of plan assets as either an asset or a liability. The projected benefit obligation is the actuarial present value of the benefits attributed by the pension plan benefit formula for services already provided. As a result, the plex and conceptually unsound ―minimum pension liability‖ rules, which are used when the accumulated benefit obligation is less than the fair value of pension plan assets, has been eliminated. (The accumulated benefit obligation is similar to the projected benefit obligation but does not include expected future salary increases in the calculation of the present value of actuarial benefits.)