IETF LLC December 2020 Financial Statements

The December 2020 Financial Statement for the IETF Administration LLC shows the LLC having a net income for 2020, after capital expenditure, of $9,864,972, which will surprise those who have been reading our financial statement up until this point. This is due to an audit adjustment related to US not-for-profit accounting standards and represents a 'paper' surplus rather than a cash surplus for the year.

Before 2020 the Internet Society provided its annual financial contribution in December of the year prior to the year it applied to and so our financial statements for 2020 before December showed us running at a significant deficit, with the expectation that this would turn around to a surplus in December when the ISOC contribution was received. Then, in November 2020 a new financial support agreement was reached with the Internet Society, which saw it commit to increasing its contribution and to switching its payment date to March in the year in which it applies. We therefore expected to receive no payment in 2020 and the December 2020 financial statement to show a deficit of close to $3m.

However, due to the way US not-for-profit accounting law works, any unconditional contribution must be accounted for in the year it is agreed, even if it is not paid until a later year. With the new Internet Society financial support agreement, the contributions for 2021 and 2022 are considered as unconditional and so our auditors have requested that we account for them in 2020, even though we don't expect the 2021 payment of $6,250,000 until later this month and the 2022 payment or $6,500,000 until March of 2022. To complicate matters further, the 2022 payment is very slightly discounted by $7,791 as it is more than a year out. This then shows a total Internet Society contribution of $12,742,209 for 2020 and recognised as income in December 2020 even though the cash is still to follow.

Our end of year audit is yet to be finalised but the December 2020 Financial Statement contains this adjustment above and the many normal audit adjustments that are applied at end of year.

Please feel free to contact me directly if you have any questions regarding the IETF LLC finances at exec-director@ietf.org.