The Selection Of International Accounting Standards Essay

The issue of adoption of international financial reporting standards (IFRSS) in Australia has been controversial issue since the first time Australian Financial Reporting council (FRC) announced the policy in 2002. Many believe that IFRSS adoption will lead to great advantages such as enhance financial report comparability, improve quality of financial reporting, attract more foreign investor, and other significant advantages. However, some also believe that the adoption merely result in disadvantages and cost for Australian business, accounting profession and even Australian government.

Access to capital markets in United Kingdom is easy after the adoption of IFRs. Public capital markets play an important role in financing the activities of non-financial companies in the United Kingdom, providing them with the main option to bank loans and private sources of finance. These set of international accounting standards helped reduce the information processing and auditing costs to the UK’s market participants. With the help of adoption of IFRS it is expected to lower information costs to capital markets, and the UK

The IOSCO plan does not cover accounting standards.(66) These standards are important for providing financial statements in a scheme that are prepared in the similar manner as those by issuers from other countries. The development of international accounting standards is the subject of a distinct project by IOSCO, and many accounting professionals who are concomitant with that undertaking are hopeful that a satisfactory solution is within reach.(67) Supposing, however, that an agreement is possible on a core set of financial standards and that they too are embraced by securities regulators as compulsory for foreign issuers, the road to commonality has at least two other impediments.

We now want to look into the International Accounting Standards Board and framework for the preparation and presentation of financial statements. The conceptual frameworks are split into five categories and are in the following order: the objective of financial statements; underlying assumptions; the qualitative characteristics that determine the usefulness of information in financial statements; the definition, recognition, and measurement of the elements from which financial statements are constructed; and the concepts of capital and capital maintenance (Ankarath 11). The standards under IFRS are beginning to become much more popular across the world for several different reasons. The International Financial Reporting Standards are currently being used by at the very least 100 countries and “[was] expected that by 2011, more than 150 countries [would] have adopted them” (Ankarath 1). We happen to find this important because it seems that a lot of countries are starting to adopt IFRS to report their financial statements. One of the reasons why many countries made the switch over to IFRS is because “the decision of the U.S. SEC to allow foreign private issuers to list their securities on U.S.

During the PRE-IFRS accounting system and where worldwide accounting diversity was widespread, a number of PRE-IFRS developmental factors were found to be the cause behind international differences in ownership and financing of companies and led to differences in the financial reporting practices of multi-national corporations (MNCs). This type of environment created extensive opportunities for corruption and poor performance and made it hard to compare global companies. The following four main PRE-IFRS development factors have the biggest impact on international business accounting practices: source of finance, legal system, taxation system and political and economic ties (Meek & Saudagaran, 1990). Even though the International Financial

For nearly half a century, a movement has been underway to establish a high-quality, comprehensive set of international accounting standards, with the goal of facilitating international trade and investment. In the global capital market, differences in the rules of accounting for the purposes of recognition, measurement, and reporting of financial results have impaired the smooth transfer of information across borders. Given that it accounts for nearly a third of the global market, there is considerable pressure for the United States to conform to the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), as promulgated by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). While moving to a single set of accounting standards could create

But there a certain limit of flexibility of this international standards for cover with all the differences accounting standard or accounting practices in between country. The IFRS is to increase the comparability of annual financial reports no matter oversea or domestic. This only can be success when the new set of accounting standard published by IFRS and adopting by country when only the cultural, economics, politics and other factors within the country change (Chen, 2009).

This essay will critically evaluate the adoption of International Accounting Standards by UK companies. IAS (International Accounting Standards) created by IASC (International accounting standards committee) are a set of standards stating how particular types of transactions and other events should be reflected in financial statements. Since 2001 the IASB (International Accounting Standards Board) succeeded the IASC to create the IFRS (International Financial Reporting Standards) which are “a single set of accounting standards, developed and maintained by the International Accounting Standards Board (the Board) with the intention of those standards being capable of being applied on a globally consistent basis—by developed,

Over the last decade, the way in which financial reporting is carried out has seen some significant advancements. One of the most momentous changes has been the introduction of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), which have been adopted broadly throughout the world, with one major exception, the United States. Before accounting standards can be considered truly global, this exception has to be resolved. The prospect of such an occurrence took massive strides in 2002, when the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB); responsible for standard-setting in the US, announced their intention to work alongside the IASB in order to converge IFRS with US GAAP. For the first time, a truly global set of accounting standards seemed a

Globalization has a great impact on today’s economy. The differences of accounting regulations and practices in various countries have become a noteworthy obstacle to globalization and economic development. International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) mitigates global business barriers. In order to adapt to the increasingly global business environment, public companies in Canada will move to IFRS by 2011. This movement will have a significant influence on Canadian business such as capital markets, financial statement preparers, the accounting profession, and even accounting students. Investors are eager to

International Accounting Standards (IAS) in effect since 2002 and International Board (IASB) together, provides the conceptual framework of financial reporting in the UK, in effect as of 2005. They have been working together to meet International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) issued by International Finance Committee (IFC) which have been endorsed by the EU. IFRS uses a principles approach designed to provide flexibility, transparency and comparability allowing a robust system in providing investors with relevant and reliable financial data, Randy, M (2014). In this essay, countries such as China and the US will be used as examples where the impacts, strengths and weaknesses will be analysed by comparing and contrasting their progress. As a result, a judgement will be made of which country has progressed well in converging to the standards and whether benefits can be seen to the country as a whole.

There is a clear roadmap to social globalization and convergence of US.GAAP – IFRS Standard as prescribed by the Security and Exchange Commission (SEC) for users that set up financial statements in accordance with IFRS as issued by IASB. This followed would lead to a worldwide adoption of IFRS over the next few years. In his work, Barry (2009, p.26-27) states, “The advantage of a single set of financial reporting standards are manifest, particularly as internationalization of business activities became the norm. In particular, having uniform, high quality standards has been extolled as fostering international business relationships, with the goal being the facilitation of cross border capital flows and lowering the cost of capital _ the expected results of the anticipated reduction of perceived accounting risk”.

The article is showing the relationship between IFRS adoption and the effect on the quality of the information in low investor protection countries. International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) is a set of accounting standards, developed and maintained by a not-for-profit organisation which is called International Accounting Standard Board (IASB) (http://www.ifrs.org/About-us/Pages/What-are-IFRS.aspx). The purpose of IFRS is to provide a global framework and also a general guideline to all firms such as public companies, so that they can prepare and disclose their financial statement globally. It is interpreted as it can provide the investors and other users (internal and external users) with financial statement that has ability to be compared with other company either within countries or overseas (http://www.ifrs.org/About-us/Pages/What-are-IFRS.aspx // http://searchsecurity.techtarget.co.uk/definition/IFRS-International-Financial-Reporting-Standards). It also uniting the capital market under one common reporting language and this would lead to produce high quality financial reporting across the world (ball,2006). This article has included 3 countries which in the low investor protection countries such as France, Germany and Sweden, in order to examine the effect of IFRS adoption on information quality. Besides, the three countries have different

According to Alexander et al. (2011), stakeholders around the world uses information from financial statements in their decision-making process for many different purposes and it is almost the same on how they use the information in every country. However, there can be differences on the communication that information when different types accounting standards are used. Ball defines that “IFRS are accounting rules (‘standards’) issued by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB), an independent organisation based in London, UK” (2006, p6). Therefore, they are set of rules where public companies globally should apply to when producing financial reporting. This essay will be looking further into how local institutional and economic factors influence arise with uniform standards while preparing financial reporting in different countries. Based on the findings, this essay will conclude that it is possible to produce uniform financial reporting with uniform standards with some changes to the current IFRS.

Accounting standard has been introduced after the World War II where every country has its own proper accounting practices such as the United States Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (the US GAAP). As time flies, international trade and foreign direct investment has experience a period of rapid growth where the companies begin to expand their business in a larger scale. Frequent international mergers and acquisitions especially by American corporations to the European companies has created the diverse accounting practices where comparing financial statements between country to another become very difficult to do. To lessen the difference and promote international harmonization in accounting practices, Sir Henry Benson, senior partner in the United Kingdom (UK) firm of Cooper Brothers & Co. led the founding of International Accounting Standards Committee (IASC) and issued the International Accounting Standard (IAS). Since 2001, the new IAS is known as International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and has been issued by International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). Ball (2006) stated in his article that “the notion that uniform standards alone will produce uniform financial reporting seem naïve”. I strongly agreed with this for several reasons which I will discuss further below with real world examples.