engleski

DO FREQUENT CHANGES OF IFRSs CAUSE PRACTICAL APPLICATION PROBLEMS IN CROATIA?

Due to the increasing number of International Financial Reporting Standards’ (IFRSs) users and the efforts of the International Accounting Standards Board to provide quality rules in the preparation of basic financial statements, the IFRSs are frequently revised and changed. This can cause problems of practical nature for IFRS’s users around the world. Some of these changes occur in order to improve existing standards. The other ones define completely new recognition and measurement rules for financial statement elements or eliminate the possibility of using some alternative procedures previously allowed by particular IFRS. Acknowledging that the IFRSs are subject to frequent changes and knowing that it represents comprehensive and complex set of accounting rules it is important to keep up to date with those changes and to translate them into the official national languages. During that process, some problems associated with adequate interpretation and translation of IFRSs from the original English language into the national languages can occur. Continuous changes in standards also require continuous education of accountants which can pose additional administrative and financial burden for enterprises. Since the financial statements should be prepared in accordance with adopted accounting standards, it is of greatest importance for accountants to be in line with the latest changes in IFRSs. The IFRSs are indispensable in the Croatian financial reporting system, especially for large and quoted companies. Empirical research was conducted in order to find out whether the changes in IFRSs cause problems to accountants in Croatia. The target respondents were the accountants employed by large and quoted companies in Croatia which are obliged to apply the IFRSs. The main goal of the research paper was to determine whether and to what extent users of IFRSs face with the problem of understanding the standards that result from the changes in standards and inadequate translation into the national language.

Croatia; changes in standards; financial reporting; IFRS; problems

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