Legal reservation for which payments will be made in the future.

• A. Expenditures
• B. Obligations
• C. Time
• D. Amount

Answer: (B)

A binding liability to pay in the future is created when there is a contractual or formal legal commitment. This is what obligations represent in government finance: a legal reservation that funds will be disbursed to cover a future payment. It records a liability on the books before cash actually goes out, signaling that a payment will occur later. Expenditures, by contrast, are those payments once they are made or incurred; time and amount describe when or how much but do not by themselves create a future payment liability. So the term that best fits “legal reservation for which payments will be made in the future” is obligations.