what are other long term liabilities 
other long term liabilities are a line item on a balance sheet that lumps together obligations that are not due within 12 months these debts that are less urgent to repay are a part of their total liabilities but are categorized as other when the company doesn t deem them important enough to warrant individual identification understanding other long term liabilitiesliabilities are debts that a company owes they appear on the balance sheet and are categorized as either current they must be paid back within a year or long term they are not due for at least 12 months or the length of a company s operating cycle then there are other liabilities in financial statements companies use the term other to refer to anything extra that is not significant enough to identify separately because they aren t deemed particularly noteworthy such items are grouped together rather than broken down one by one and ascribed an individual figure other long term liabilities can be defined as the rest of the debts that a company is required to pay back in a period of a year or more that are not separately accounted for and identified in the company s balance sheet some companies disclose the composition of these liabilities in their footnotes to the financial statements if they believe they are material in many cases it is just a matter of presentation preference whether or not to itemize these material liabilities on the balance sheet or aggregate them under other long term liabilities and break the entry down in the notes indeed it is often possible to determine what makes up the specifics of other long term liabilities on a balance sheet by consulting the footnotes within the company s 10 k filing or annual report however this isn t always strictly necessary meaning that not all companies will provide additional details of these particular obligations types of other long term liabilitiesother long term liabilities might include items such as pension liabilities capital leases deferred credits customer deposits and deferred tax liabilities in the case of holding companies it can also contain things such as intercompany borrowings loans made from one of the company s divisions or subsidiaries to another special considerationslumping together a group of debts without identifying the nature of the debt might sound like a potential red flag in reality this practice is normal and shouldn t raise concern provided that the obligations in question are relatively small compared to the company s total liabilities they should also be comparable to how the company has operated in the past sometimes year to year comparisons of other long term liabilities are provided in financial statement footnotes if the amount of other long term liabilities as a percentage of total liabilities as displayed on the balance sheet is high enough to merit investigation and there is no associated note the analyst could call the investor relations ir contact to ask questions example of other long term liabilitiesford motor co f reported approximately 28 4 billion of other long term liabilities on its balance sheet for fiscal year fy 2020 representing around 10 of total liabilities in the notes to the financial statements the main components were broken down into pension liabilities other post retirement employee benefits employee benefit plans dealers customer allowances and claims and others 1