Question

Plush Corporation purchased 100 percent of Common Corporation’s common stock on January 1, 20X3, and paid $450,000. The fair value of Common’s identifiable net assets at that date was $430,000. By the end of 20X5, the fair value of Common, which Plush considers to be a reporting unit, had increased to $485,000; however, Plush’s external auditor made a passing comment to the company’s chief accountant that Plush might need to recognize impairment of goodwill on one or more of its investments.Prepare a memo to Plush’s chief accountant indicating the tests used in determining whether goodwill has been impaired. Include in your discussion one or more possible conditions under which Plush might be required to recognize impairment of goodwill on its investment in Common Corporation.In preparing your memo, review the current accounting literature, including authoritative pronouncements of the FASB and other appropriate bodies. Support your discussion with citations and quotations from the applicable literature.

Answer 1

Answer:

Please refer the detail answer in the memo below

Explanation:

Date: 24 January 20XX

Subject: Review of Impairment of Goodwill

From: External Auditors

To: Chief Accountant, Plush Corporation

Upon review of the investment made by your company in Common Corporation, we believe that there are possible indications of the impairment of the goodwill initially recognized in the books upon acquisition.

At the time of Acquisition:

Consideration = $450,000

Fair Value of Net Assets = $430,000

Goodwill = $450,000 - $430,000 = $20,000

The new guidance issued by FASB, requires only a one-step quantitative impairment test, whereby a goodwill impairment loss will be measured as the excess of a reporting unit’s carrying amount over its fair value.

However, if we follow the previous guidance of FASB, we have to test the impairment with the following three steps:

Step 1: We will compare the carrying amount of the net assets with the Fair value of Reporting Unit, and if the carrying amount exceeds the fair value, we will record the impairment.

Step 1: We will compute, implied value of goodwill by comparing the fair value of the reporting unit with the fair value of the identifiable net assets, if FV of net assets are higher, then there is no impairment, otherwise we will jump to Step 3.

Step 3: If the calculated implied value of the goodwill is lower than the actual goodwill at acquisition, than the difference is the impairment loss, however in case the implied value of the goodwill is higher than the actual goodwill at acquisition, no impairment shall be recorded.

Apparently, since the fair value of Common had increased to $485,000, there is no need to recognize the impairment loss on goodwill; however we believe that the estimated fair value of Common is less than the $430,000 and therefore impairment should be recorded.