According to the Generally Accepted Accounting Principles, T-Shirts by Tommy can account for the accident is to record an extraordinary item. Using the definition from our Intermediate Accounting textbook, extraordinary events are defined as, "?events and transactions that are distinguished by their unusual nature and by the infrequency of their occurrence" (Keiso). Because of the nature of the plane crash, and the fact that these types of accidents happen very rarely, it can definitely be categorized as extraordinary. Tommy needs to estimate how much to expense for the loss of the building and other losses associated with the crash. Then he must record this item on his yearly income statement.
If Tommy's business was not going to be operating soon at another location the smart thing to do would be to end the lease so that they would no longer have to pay for the equipment. Tommy, however, has a location where he can be operating shortly so he should consider not recording lease expense on the equipment during its downtime, and distributing it to the rest of the year evenly. It would not make sense to maintain the same lease expense during which time the equipment is not generating revenue; doing so would violate the matching principle. The best way to do this is to allocate the depreciation for the equipment to later periods when the equipment will be up and running. For instance, if we had a $1000 expense each month for equipment depreciation, for the 3 months and 2 weeks the machines will be down, we would readjust the $3500 to the remaining time of our lease. If there were 10 months on the lease after that time, we could add $350 to each of the remaining months.
The situation that Tommy finds himself in is unfortunate, but yet the effects could have b ...