EIRP Proceedings (Jun 2022)
Fiscal Digitalization- The Antidote of Creative Accounting
Abstract
The current context, national and international, characterized by a broad economic crisis, reveals more than ever the need for special attention to creative accounting in terms of increasing the role of digitalization in its maintenance, identification and analysis of manifestations in connection with the informal economy. Creative accounting is the product of economic realities that are manifested in a maneuvering range between tax optimization and tax fraud and digitization can amplify, through its resources of creativity and novelty, the negative impact on the informal economy. The world, everything around, everyday life is becoming more and more digital, the way of functioning and manifestation of the implicit interpersonal relations and of the economic ones, the economy as a whole, is changing. Digitization, characterized by rapid transformations to adapt to new technologies, while at first glance eases the task of tax authorities in combating the negative effects of creative accounting, may as well make this process difficult by fraudulent use of intent by power information in the digital environment. Beneficially, digitization can enhance the virtuosity of creative accounting by connecting it to the rapidly evolving markets and payment systems, but just as well due to the desire for enrichment and business perversity it favors the negative sides of creative accounting: manipulating accounts, beautifying companies’ image, distorted presentation of performance, choice of convenient measurement, communication and information methods, etc. Digitization, driven by the Covid crisis, has reformed the world to unimaginable parameters, the influence on human psychology being very visible, confirming Naser’s theory that creative accounting is the combination of the complexity of economic reality with psychological factors specific to human beings. Fiscal digitization, adopted in Romania in 2022, by implementing and generalizing SPV, introducing electronic invoicing Ro-Invoice, SAF-T reporting, RO e-Transport declaration, directs accounting creativity to the correct area of real-time tax reporting, significantly reducing the range of its action in the area of fraud that will allow the authorities to identify and take operational action.
