Australian Accounting Review最新文献

This paper makes a number of observations on the International Accounting Standards Board's Discussion Paper DP/2020/2 Business Combinations under Common Control. We address issues associated with the approach for applying acquisition accounting and discuss the practicality of the proposed criteria. We question the ability of this new DP to contribute to either decision usefulness or comparability in the presence of non-controlling shareholders. We also address issues related to cost–benefit considerations and (unintended) earnings management opportunities, and propose some adjustments to properly reflect economic substance.

This paper has two main objectives. Firstly, it reviews relevant literature on the experiences of different levels of governments worldwide in adopting public sector accrual accounting (PSAA). Secondly, it critically analyses these studies and seeks to identify gaps in the extant literature to provide suggestions for future research. We reviewed and analysed 136 peer-reviewed journal articles on PSAA over a 23-year period spanning different levels of government worldwide. Our review and analysis suggest that the adoption of PSAA by different levels of government worldwide has been a long and complex process requiring possibly substantial implementation costs that are undisclosed to the public. Owing to the absence of high-quality research providing empirical evidence of the benefits of PSAA, we conclude that thus far, the benefits of PSAA to government and citizens have yet to be substantiated. A limitation of this paper is that it is confined to the keywords used in the literature search. Nonetheless, the approach of aggregating and analysing these articles collectively allows this paper to not only provide useful insights into understanding the determinants and outcomes of PSAA but also to offer meaningful directions for future research with regards to multi-level PSAA.

This paper examines the effect of capitalising operating leases on the total liabilities to total assets and surplus to total asset ratios for a sample of New Zealand charities. It finds that both ratios have significantly increased post-capitalisation and that expenditures change. This extends the constructive lease capitalisation literature to the not-for-profit sector. This paper also discusses the characteristics of charities’ operating leases and how they differ from the for-profit sector. Overall, this paper provides timely evidence to standard setters, especially considering the current exposure draft converging International Public Sector Accounting Standard lease accounting with International Financial Reporting Standard 16 Leases.

This study investigates the impact of depreciation practices on the internal decision making of local government (LG) budget officers. Prior studies focus on depreciation practices that influence decision making and policy formulation through financial performance indicators. However, such practices are also expected to affect capital asset management. Specifically, the presence of depreciation information makes it possible for budget officers to account for the burden of current and future generations such as depreciation costs and debt interests when budgeting. Thus, this study tests the impact of depreciation information on capital budgeting by conducting a survey experiment with all 1788 LGs in Japan. A questionnaire was sent to LG budget officers with two patterns of experimental groups: decision making for capital budgeting (a) without depreciation information and (b) with depreciation information. The experimental results show that budget officers’ capital budget decisions are influenced by the presence of depreciation information. This study contributes to accounting and public sector research and practice by showing the impact of depreciation information on the decision making of LG budget officers for capital budgeting.

The aim of this paper is to explain the International Accounting Standards Board's (IASB) preliminary views for accounting for business combinations under common control, an issue not currently addressed in International Financial Reporting Standards. Such combinations are widespread and the accounting for them is diverse. The IASB's preliminary views aim to reduce diversity in practice and to improve the information provided to investors so they can understand the effects of these transactions and compare companies that undertake them.

Accounting for business combinations under common control is not currently addressed in International Financial Reporting Standards. The author describes some of the International Accounting Standard Board's proposals to reduce diversity and improve investors’ information in this area.

This paper makes a number of observations on the International Accounting Standards Board's Discussion Paper DP/2020/2 Business Combinations under Common Control. I address issues such as the choice of the controlling party or transferred business book, the principles and objectives of the Discussion Paper, and the relationship with related party disclosures.

This paper discusses the controlling entity's perspective in business combinations under common control (BCUCC) and suggests some issues for the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) to consider in its redeliberations on the preliminary views in the Discussion Paper. The paper explains the use of a book-value approach in practice, specifically by listed companies and pre-listing initial public offering (IPO) candidates in Hong Kong, the relevance of the controlling entity perspective and the importance of pre-combination information to users of the financial statements. This paper discusses the controlling entity's perspective in BCUCC and suggests some issues for the IASB to consider in its redeliberations on the preliminary views in the Discussion Paper.

We explore implications of asbestos for the measurement and reporting of liabilities, assets and expenses by diverse entities. We argue that entities in both public and private sectors are failing to recognise or appropriately measure liabilities related to asbestos and that the implications of asbestos for assets and expenses in financial statements are rarely reported. While we focus on recognition and measurement implications for Australian entities, we also examine relevant requirements in other jurisdictions and for sustainability reporting.

The role of management control practices in product innovation is a subject that has received great attention in management control literature. This research explores the relationship between target costing (TC) functionality, the quality of information systems (IS) and product innovation. We conducted an empirical study in 108 large industrial enterprises, which have research and development departments. The results show that there is a positive relationship between TC functionality and product innovation in terms of product newness and innovation rate. A direct effect of the quality of IS information on product innovation was not established but rather it was found that the positive association between the functionality of TC and product innovation is stronger in firms that provide IS information of higher quality as compared to firms that provide IS information of lower quality.