Principles-based versus Rules-based Accounting Standards
In business, things are always changing, so it is no surprise this is true also for accountants and accounting in general. As a result, questions may be as old as time would arise the examined the nature of businesses and their policies and as of more recent this asked which is better - principles or rules. First and foremost what is principles-based and rules-based accounting? According to Scott (2015), Principles-based Accounting is where “considerations require that consolidation is necessary when failure to do would be misleading” whereas Rules-based Accounting “attempted to lay down detailed rules for how to account” (pg. 20).
Enron and Worldcom were US run companies who use rules-based
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Thus, their stakeholder can make informed decisions about a company and execute investment strategies; however, these reports have been highly criticized as of late due to scandals surrounding Enron and Worldcom, so it is not unusual that companies want to find out which of these approaches is best for their organizations.
This paper objective is to examine the pros and cons of both principles-based standards and rules-based standards and decide on which of these approaches is the better for the ever-evolving nature of accounting. Ultimately, the better of the two approach should take into account reliability and
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pg. 3). On the other hand, it suggests that rules-based standards lead to a 'show me where it says I can’t ' attitude, which, in turn, can lead to dysfunctional financial reporting behavior. This approach tends to encourage those to play games with the rules, to find loopholes and ways around the practices. As it has been evidenced in both Canada and the USA by our political leaders shortly after passing new, .restrictive, campaign fundraising rules (Agoglia, Doupnik, and Tsakumis, 2011, pg.
The goal of the Codification is to simplify the organization of thousands of authoritative U.S. accounting pronouncements issued by multiple standard-setters. To achieve this goal, the FASB initiated a project to integrate and topically organize all relevant accounting pronouncements issued by the U.S. standard-setters including those of the FASB, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA), and the Emerging Issues Task Force (EITF)
To help accounting professionals easily navigate through 50-plus years of unorganized US generally accepted accounting principles (GAAP) and standards the Trustees of the Financial Accounting Foundation approved the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) Accounting Standards Codification (Codification.) By codifying authoritative US GAAP, FASB will provide users with real-time and accurate information in one location. Concurrently, FASB developed the FASB Codification Research System; a web-based system allowing registered users to electronically research accounting issues. Since 2009, the codification became the single source of nongovernmental authoritative GAAP.
The definition of stakeholder is “ Any group or individual who can affect or is affected by the achievement of the organizations objectives.” (Freeman, 1984). Three stakeholders that have been identified are old employees (50s-60s), young employees, and shareholders. These three stakeholders could be affected the most by the CEO’s decision.
In conclusion, appropriate principles could lead to clearer interaction and more comparable financial reporting standards without the need of the current rules. The NZ Framework has provided parts of clear and appropriate underlying principles to lead the application of NZ GAAP and other financial reporting standards. However the standards setting movement from ‘rule-driven’ approach to ‘principle-based’ approach is still half-way in New Zealand. How could principles be sufficiently clearly portrayed and put into practice require the profession to think and support. Just as Tweedie (2007, p.7) states, a principle based system will only work if preparers, auditors, users and regulators wish to make it work.
Financial and Managerial accounting are used for making sound financial decisions about an organization. They provide information of past quantitative financial activities and are useful in making future economic decisions. (Albrecht, Stice, Stice, & Skousen, 2002) The same financial data is used to derive reports for each accounting process yet they differ in some ways. Financial accounting primarily provides external reports for external users such as stock holders, creditors, regulating authority and others. (Garrison, Noreen, & Brewer, 2010) On the other hand Managerial accounting is concern with providing information that deals with the internal viability of the organization and is tailored to meet the needs of an individual organization. (Albrecht, Stice, Stice, & Skousen, 2002)
One of the most debatable topics in the accounting industry today is the extent in which we should make the financial statements understandable to the general population. The FASB currently gears its reporting standards toward...
Stakeholder analysis is important for successful implementation of projects and/or strategic activities within any organisation. It is used to analyse the stakeholders in order to understand them and classify them according to their power, influence and interest. Stakeholders are people who have an interest in a commercial entity including those within the organisation and outside. These include the boss, senior executives, customers, suppliers, government, your co-workers, the team and others. All these people are important in the implementation and success of strategy.
Stakeholders are those groups or individual in society that have a direct interest in the performance and activities of business. The main stakeholders are employees, shareholders, customers, suppliers, financiers and the local community. Stakeholders may not hold any formal authority over the organization, but theorists such as Professor Charles Handy believe that a firm’s best long-term interests are served by paying close attention to the needs of each of these stakeholders. The modern view is that a firm has responsibilities to all its stakeholders i.e. everyone with a legitimate interest in the company. These include shareholders, competitors, government, employees, directors, distributors, customers, sub-contractors, pressure groups and local community. Although a company’s directors owes a legal duty to the shareholders, they also have moral responsibilities to other stakeholder group’s objectives in their entirely. As a firm can’t meet all stakeholders’ objectives in their entirety, they have to compromise. A company should try to serve the needs of these groups or individuals, but whilst some needs are common, other needs conflict. By the development of this second runway, the public and stakeholders are affected in one or other way and it can be positive and negative.
The aim of this paper is to provide the framework of the current professional accounting code of ethics. What are the ethics and how we define them? In this report we try to determine the main ethical principles that will establish the right and
Stakeholders are interest of an individual or groups that directly or indirectly affected by the organisation’s activities, policies and objectives (Henry Frechette, 2010). Stakeholders can be divided as internal (managers and employees) and external (shareholders, customers, and suppliers) (BPP F9). Different stakeholders may have common interests or conflict interests with company. Company board members or management must take care about stakeholders’ interest. They can’t make the decision based on their own interest or their relation with others organisation. Conflict of interest will arise when interests of organisation act in concert with managers’ personal interests or interests of another person or organisations, (Anon, no date).
Accounting principles are main consideration , certain standards like rules of operations are pillar characteristicis to built accounting statements. Accounting principles can be presented in many ways, sometimes its create confusion for readers mainly for beginners, but still acoounting principles are main tool to obtained financial statements. Its hold the whole acoounting process together.
According to business, or any organization, Accounting plays a major role in developing and growth of the business. Financial standards of the organization expected as the complexities of business growth and expansion. Hence determining the implementation of the standards can vary according to the type of industry, business or organization.
A consequences of focusing on organization or company’s stakeholder is that the shareholder value itself can be enhanced and improved when a wider stakeholder group-such as employees, provider or credit, customers, suppliers government and the local community is taken into account (Mallin, 2011). This theory also related to the organization management and business ethics that uphold moral and values in managing a company as it will covers the benefits to the society and other external parties as a whole rather than just for the internal parties.
The Financial Accounting Standards Boards (FASB) defined conceptual framework as a consistent of underlying concepts and the ideas that describe the nature and general purpose of financial reporting which may lead to consistent standard in accounting (Deegan 2010). The role of the conceptual framework is to ensure that financial statements in accounting are free from bias and to provide useful information that is useful for user’s decision making. The standard-setting board also formulated a range of perceptions and theories related to accounting to trigger the objectives of financial reporting. The standard-setting board keeps issuing the conceptual framework over time to ensure that the conceptual framework’s objectives are improving to provide useful financial information. The innovative work on conceptual framework was embraced in the United States by the FASB in the early 1970s. The FASB accomplished disappointment in attempting to generate a standard that at the outset might not appear to present, especially testing theoretical issues. Regardless, while attempting to achieve concession on Statement of Financial Accounting Standard, tending to the theoretical issues produced critical matter for the board members. In this manner, throughout the outset the FASB understood the requirement for an obvious conceptual framework. Based on Hines’s argument, the conceptual framework is mean to provide the ability to increase self-regulate of a profession in order to neutralizing government interference from arising. Whether this argument has been accepted or not will be discussed in more detail with supported evidence to clarify the main point about Hines’s argument. Further details about this argument will discuss below.
Accounting as a discipline is more of a law, whereas finance is more of a theoretical practice. Accounting has clearly defined guidelines, rules and regulations. As defined by Wikipedia (2005), "accounting is the measurement, disclosure or provision of assurance about information that helps managers and other decision makers make resource allocation decisions".