Annals of the University of Oradea: Economic Science (Jul 2013)
HARMONIZATION OF NATIONAL REGULATION AND INTERNATIONAL FINANCIAL REPORTING STANDARDS – PARTICULAR CASE OF NONCURRENT ASSETS
Abstract
In the scientific literature, accounting harmonization is a top topic because it helps to increase the comparability of financial statements. Also in Romania in the last 10 years becames a topic that is very often debated. The harmonization is trying to reduce differences of financial reporting statements between countries or, in the other words, it is trying to bring to a common denominator of existing rules when appear conflicts of comparability between them. The purpose of this paper is to measure the harmonisation between national and international regulation for a significant element of financial position statement, such as noncurrent assets. This paper provides an empirical research of information that must be presented by entities which apply national accounting standards or international ones when financial statements are prepared, trying to measure the harmonization between the two referential. Thus, in trying to determine the harmonisation, we use the Jaccard coefficient in order to provide an overview of the degree of harmonization of accounting practice. When measuring the degree of comparability of Romanian accounting regulations with International Accounting Standards we analyzed noncurrent assets and impairment of assets using the Jaccard coefficient for accounting treatments and we calculated an average of similarities between the two regulations. Further, the results suggest that there is an average level of harmonization for the accounting treatment of noncurrent assets and for determining the impairment of the assets, the methods are the same. The study contributes to the development of accounting literature about the harmonisation between national regulation and international standards regarding the noncurrent assets and impairment of the assets, which together with the other elements define the activity of the business. In addition, the study provides an analysis of how the regulations treats noncurrent assets, during the life of the asset, namely: the recognition phase, the evaluation and the depreciation.
