Assets, Liabilities, and Owners' Equity are all items that appear on a company's balance sheet.

• A. True
• B. False
• C. Not necessarily
• D. Only assets and liabilities

Answer: (A)

The balance sheet is built to show what the company owns, what it owes, and the owners’ claim on the business. This comes from the fundamental accounting equation: assets = liabilities + owners’ equity. Because assets must be financed either by borrowing (liabilities) or by the owners’ investment and retained earnings (owners’ equity), all three categories appear on the balance sheet. So the statement is true. In corporations you might see stockholders’ equity in place of owners’ equity, but it’s the same idea and still part of the balance sheet. Omitting owners’ equity would leave out a key part of how the assets are financed and would break the balancing equation.