GASB 45 and other post-employment benefit promises : the fog is clearing

It is often said that you won’t get rich working for the government, but you can’t beat the benefits. One form of these benefits is “Other Post-Employment Benefits"(OPEB), which represent government promises to employees to provide health care and other non-pension benefits after retirement. Government employers commonly use these benefits to attract talent in lieu of large salaries or bonuses and to provide future security to employees. Until now, governments have also been able to apply preferential accounting treatment to OPEB plans, which allowed deferral of the costs of today’s promises into the future. However, due to a standard issued by the Governmental Accounting Standards Board (GASB) in June 2004, this is about to change.Accounting - Standards ; Government employees ; Employee fringe benefits