Miscellaneous Long-Term Assets

Category

Balance Sheet

Units

Currency

US-GAAP elements

OtherAssetsMiscellaneousNoncurrentOtherAssetsNoncurrent

Reference

Regulation S-X Rule 5-02.17 (Other assets)

Source

Reported in SEC EDGAR filings (US-GAAP XBRL taxonomy)

Miscellaneous long-term assets are the noncurrent assets left over after every named category has been counted, meaning items that are not property and equipment, investments, long-term receivables, intangibles, goodwill, deferred tax assets, or derivatives. They are expected to provide benefit, or be realized, more than a year after the balance-sheet date.

The contents vary by company but often include long-term prepaid expenses, deposits, capitalized contract costs, cash surrender value of life insurance, restricted cash held for long-term purposes, and deferred charges. Individually these items are usually too small to warrant their own line.

In XBRL filings, companies that itemize their other assets tag the residual catch-all as OtherAssetsMiscellaneousNoncurrent. Many do not go that far and report one other assets line, tagged OtherAssetsNoncurrent, that combines miscellaneous items with larger identifiable ones. The distinction between miscellaneous and other long-term assets therefore depends partly on how much detail a given company discloses and on how a data provider maps its lines.

Regulation S-X Rule 5-02.17 governs the other assets caption. Any single item not properly belonging in an earlier asset caption must be stated separately, on the balance sheet or in a note, if it exceeds 5 percent of total assets, and significant additions or deletions should be explained. For significant deferred charges, the company must disclose its policy for deferring and amortizing them. Items below the threshold may be grouped, which is how a miscellaneous line accumulates.

Miscellaneous assets deserve a glance because their size is mostly within management's discretion to disclose. A small, stable balance is unremarkable. A balance that grows quickly, or becomes large relative to total assets, can mean costs are being capitalized rather than expensed, and the footnote may reveal what is inside. Analysts building conservative measures of book value sometimes exclude these assets, since many of them, like deferred charges and deposits, cannot readily be sold to raise cash.