A recent decision provides banks with a reduced compensation hit stemming from excess employee stock options withheld for tax purposes, at least in the short term.

The Financial Accounting Standards Board’s Emerging Issues Task Force, which deals with the most urgent accounting issues, came to a cheaper conclusion than its parent board on the question of what to do when a company has withheld more than the minimum required number of stock option shares for tax purposes.

The EITF decided in a recent meeting that cost associated with only the excess number of shares should be expensed.

FASB had decided earlier in its work on an interpretation of Opinion 25 that compensation costs related to the entire award had to be recognized.

An exposure draft of the interpretation was released last week. If that proposal is adopted, it will govern the accounting. But until then, the EITF’s looser conclusion goes.

The board also decided that the effective date of the provision affecting excess tax withholding would apply to options granted after Dec. 31, 2009.

"The delayed effective date is to allow banks to modify their plans, to not allow excess withholding," said Lailani Moody, senior manager, assurance services, of Grant Thornton.

"There’s a big difference in terms of costs between the EITF version and FASB’s version," Moody said. She added the EITF’s decision could affect options for some time, because although it only pertains to options granted for the end of this year, those options might not be exercised for several more years.