However, the requirements would undoubtedly be different if the supermajority had been in place. The primary change that SFAS 76 makes in the requirements of APBO 26, the prior authoritative support, is to include legal forgiveness and in substance defeasance as extinguishment of debt. Employers Accounting for Pensions SFAS 87 establishes specific guidelines for computing net periodic pension cost, which is the amount recorded as pension expense. If the current company contribution to the plan does not equal the expense, an asset or liability is created for the over- or underfunding. Also, an additional liability is recorded if the accumulated benefit obligation at year-end exceeds the fair value of plan assets.
Any excess is debited to an equity account.
The dissenters to SFAS 87 disagreed with various specific computations and assumptions. Two of the dissenters also did not believe the intangible asset should be recorded. In 1979, the FASB initiated a five-year inflation accounting experiment. Large companies were required to present certain inflation- adjusted information as supplemental disclosures. Five years later, SFAS 82 eliminated some of the requirements.