Dana Kubíčková

Analysis of Differences in Reporting According to IFRS in SMEs in the Czech Republic and Its Influence on Performance Measurement

New information technologies, development of international economic cooperation and market interconnection call for the need of multinational, globally applicable and acknowledged accounting standards which will enable to describe the processes taking place on the companies´ level, within the extent of the contemporary knowledge, but especially in a comparable form. These requirements are met e.g. by International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) used mainly in Europe. Their fundamental aim is to develop unified, high-quality and understandable global accounting standards. The financial statements prepared according to these standards provide high-quality, transparent and comparable information, which can help the users to make economic decisions. The information disclosed according to full IFRS standards is sometimes too superfluous for users of financial statements of small and medium–sized enterprises (SMEs) and very often the cost of its full consistence exceeds its contributions. Another problem, which is specific for the Czech Republic is that the national legislation does not allow it to specify the income tax base from the statements prepared according to IFRS standards and thus the companies have to prepare the statements according to Czech legislation in parallel, which represents a tremendous administrative burden. The aim of the article is to analyse problem areas in reporting according to IFRS at SMEs in the Czech Republic and to compare their results with the accounting practice in companies which report according to IFRS.

The Role and Current Status of IFRS in the Completion of National Accounting Rules – Evidence from the Czech Republic

Abstract The aim of this paper is to characterize the extent to which International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) is used as a reference point for national accounting rules in the Czech Republic (CR) and what elements are incorporated in Czech Accounting Regulation, paying particular attention to the latest amendment to the Accounting Act (AA) based on the EU accounting Directive (2013/34/EU). Methods used include analysis of Ministry of Finance documents, interviews with the team members who participated in the new wording of the AA to adapt it to the EU Directive and comparison of current to existing IFRS reporting rules. The results confirm that IFRS implementation in the CR is determined by economic and institutional factors, a major part of which is played by foreign ownership of dominant Czech companies and their subordinate position as subsidiaries of foreign entities and the weak capital market. Implementation of elements of IFRS into Czech accounting standards is still only partial. This process takes place as an integral part of the process of reorientation of the entire economic system toward market principles, which includes the accounting system. Each change of the AA involves some elements of IFRS; however, between the two systems, there are still significant differences, the roots of which lie in a different (continental) model of accounting.