Australian Accounting Review最新文献

This paper examines previous literature on accounting for corporate human rights (AHR) to identify the main research themes and development, conduct critical evaluations and open up new pathways towards future research. A structured literature review was conducted using 164 relevant published journal articles. Data were from the Scopus database over the last 22 years. The majority of research on AHR focuses on strategy/management and non-discrimination themes, with little research in other areas such as child labour. Research in this field is at an early stage, with more focus on adoption and implementation issues. There is a need for more in-depth and grounding analysis on the power networks among participants in broader institutional systems to provide more understanding of the underlying mechanisms. This paper discusses several suggestions such as alternative accounting and networking models to support the field, debates possible remedies to overcome drawbacks and presents options for future research. Several useful practical implications are provided for academics, corporate managers and regulators to bridge the gap between accounting and human rights practices and to enhance corporate social responsibility.

The article provides an overview of recent developments and the regulatory position on sustainability reporting in Australia. It summarises practical challenges and opportunities pertinent to scenario analysis and disclosures in the Task Force on Climate-Related Financial Disclosures (TCFD) implementation discussed at the March 2022 Australian Accounting Standards Board (AASB) Dialogue Series session. The common theme from the discussion session is that the TCFD implementations and disclosures will improve as entities continuously understand stakeholder needs, review their climate-related risk assessments and processes, climate-related metrics and targets, and disclosure policies and procedures.

This literature review provides a summary of the key insights from recent studies that use an archival method. It covers two subject matters: climate-related information and other sustainability information. For each, the paper reviews and summarises findings on current practices and the determinants and consequences of the reporting and assurance of climate-related and other sustainability information in both voluntary and mandatory regimes. The review identifies areas that are close to saturation and those that are currently under researched. It also highlights key trends in this evolving area for future research to explore.

This study investigates the relationship between institutional cross-ownership and corporate tax avoidance in Chinese listed firms. Our findings indicate that the tax avoidance aggressiveness of Chinese listed firms could be significantly motivated by institutional cross-ownership. This finding is robust to endogeneity tests, namely, propensity score matching estimation, two-stage least squares regression, generalised method of moments test, and a falsification concern. Further, this positive relationship between institutional cross-ownership and tax avoidance is more pronounced for listed firms with greater managerial ability and those with higher auditor industry expertise. Finally, such a relationship is more obvious for cross-owners within the same industry, but only significant for independent cross-owners, non-state-owned enterprises and firms within a less competitive industry. All main findings are robust to various robustness tests.

Companies can use both debt and non-debt tax shields to accomplish tax avoidance. Using a quasi-experiment in China in which the government implemented deleveraging regulations in selected industries in 2015, this study provides novel evidence of the effect of mandatory deleveraging on corporate tax avoidance. The results show that implementing mandatory deleveraging leads to an increase in the degree of corporate tax avoidance. Mechanism analyses indicate that mandatory deleveraging curbs a company's inclination to take advantage of the tax benefits of debt, but increases its tendency of using non-debt tax shields, suggesting that companies will use non-debt tax shields as a substitute for debt tax shields. Supplementary analyses show that the effect of mandatory deleveraging is more pronounced for companies with more debt, higher financing constraints and weaker tax enforcement, as well as for companies that are state owned.

One significant change in International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) 9 Financial Instruments is how firms’ equity financial assets (EFA) are presented. The default EFA presentation is at fair value through profit or loss (FVTPL); however, IFRS 9 allows irrevocable presentation of fair value through other comprehensive income (FVTOCI). Although FVTOCI is the most common presentation for EFA both before and after IFRS 9, there is a significant increase in the use of FVTPL post IFRS 9 via an improvement in disclosure clarity about presentation location. To assess the impact of EFA presentation, we recalculate profitability ratios assuming different presentation locations and find some evidence of significant differences for financial firms. We also provide descriptive evidence that EFA use and presentation behaviour vary between sectors and firm size quartiles. This study expands the literature on EFA accounting and provides a timely response to IFRS 9 post-implementation review by shedding some light on EFA use and presentation locations under IFRS 9.

The objective of this paper is to determine if fair value measurement for inventories is value-relevant. Inventories are measured at historical cost and investors will have to estimate the fair value for themselves. For a sample of firms listed in the UK and reporting from 2009 to 2018, multivariate regression results show that the historical cost component of inventories on the balance sheet is value-relevant, but that the fair value component is not. By contrast, both historical cost earnings and changes in the fair value of inventories are value-relevant. Results therefore imply that investors need both historical cost earnings and fair value movements to make decisions. By extension, fair value measurements complement, rather than replace, historical cost information.

One of the main differences between International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) 9 Financial Instruments and International Accounting Standard (IAS) 39 Financial Instruments: Recognition and Measurement is the classification and measurement of equity instruments that are financial assets. Under IFRS 9, a firm must measure acquired equity instruments at fair value through profit or loss (FVPL) unless the firm irrevocably chooses at initial recognition to measure those assets at fair value through other comprehensive income (FVOCI). In this case, a firm must recognise all changes in FVOCI without the possibility of reclassifying these amounts into profit or loss. In this context, this study has two main objectives. First, it examines the frequency of firms that elect to classify equity instruments as FVOCI in the first year of IFRS 9 adoption and identifies the determinants of the decision to classify equity instruments as available for sale (AFS) (under IAS 39) or as financial assets at FVOCI (under IFRS 9). Second, it considers whether this choice has any influence on the value relevance of financial information. The results of a sample based on firms in the FTSE 100 and EURO STOXX 50 show that risk is the main determinant of the reclassification from AFS to FVOCI in the first year of IFRS 9 adoption, while the level of variable compensation for CEOs (for AFS) and the level of fair value hierarchy (for AFS and FVOCI) are the main determinants for the classification of equity instruments. Regarding the consequences of this change, the findings indicate that the prohibition of recycling for the FVOCI option under IFRS 9 leads investors to pay more attention to the changes in fair value as recognised in OCI.

We present a conceptual and operational framework for analysing financial disclosure management by charitable organisations. We paint an overall picture of the issue and apply various theories to explain this management practice. The framework lists the many motivations and contextual factors that impel managers of charitable organisations to manage financial information and explains how they weight and prioritise items in light of considerations such as incentive bonuses, social performance, resource dependence and monitoring mechanisms. The framework also sums up the strategies and techniques that undergird financial disclosure management and describes the monitoring mechanisms that mitigate this opportunistic practice and its consequences. The paper concludes by presenting several research avenues.

We examine disclosure of going concern uncertainties by Australian companies. We begin by outlining the extant reporting framework applicable from accounting and auditing standards, and compare the approach to this issue taken across several different countries – Australia, New Zealand, the United Kingdom and the United States. We then examine reporting of going concern uncertainties for a selection of 127 Australian companies reporting at 30 June 2020 that also receive modified audit reports highlighting going concern issues. Our results indicate substantial variation in the specific requirements of audit and accounting standards impacting going concern disclosure across jurisdictions, with relevant disclosure guidance for Australian entities primarily contained in auditing, rather than accounting, standards. Not surprisingly then, we also observe significant variation in management reporting practices. These results inform our understanding of existing disclosure requirements and highlight how regulatory reliance on auditor discussion of going concern issues likely results in relatively limited management disclosure. We suggest that additional guidance may be required from accounting standard setters and also regulators with respect to management discussion of going concern uncertainty.