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Accounting System And The Roman Empire

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Another Society with their own intricate accounting system was the Roman Empire. This comes as no surprise because of the scope and size of the Roman Empire; accounting was once again a necessity to a well-maintained society. There is evidence of comprehensive financial statements in the rule of Emperor Augustus circa 63 BC-14 AD. These statements included information on expenses on “statistics concerning the provinces and dependent kingdoms; direct and indirect taxation; as well as recurrent expenditures and gifts”, as well as, “the amounts of cash in the Aerarium…and in the hands of the publicani” (Oldroyd, “The Role…”, 1995). The Aerarium was the treasury, and the publicani was the public. These are similar to what the Chinese had because they were used by the government to go about completing the financing and running of the empire. These figures could be used to make it easier to track all the expenses and revenues of the government. The government was not the only ones to keep accounting records in the Roman Empire either. Account books were kept by those look to maintain and achieve citizenship. It is believed that “men of property at Rome often did write up their permanent account-books about every month.” They were required to do this to maintain their citizenship because citizenship was tied to the amount of property owned and this meant a need to keep records of it. (Oldroyd, “The Role…”, 1995). As well as citizens, accounting was a necessity for the soldier of

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