Legal Issues with the Introduction and Application of IFRS－With a Focus on the Commercial and Tax Laws－
Asian Tax Journal Vol. 9 No. 4 (2008), pp. 15-34
Abstract
The introduction of the International Financial Reporting Standards(IFRS) causes changes not only to the domestic accounting regulations, but also to the legal areas related to accounting such as the commercial, tax, and external auditing laws. The legal issues that can take place in the process of interpreting and applying the IFRS can be summarized as follows: First, although the legal status of IFRS isn't the same from the past, there are limitations with judging the legal nature of the increasingly unified international standards according to our own legal system. If it's the dominant trend to accept GAAP in the accounting－related fields, there is a need to accept it. Secondly, there are several problems potential in the interpretation process of IFRS including interpretation of the concepts not confirmed yet, translation errors, disagreement in the time of introducing the standards among nations, and liability for damage on the part of the auditor. Thus there is a need to recognize the limitation of liability for damage on the part of the auditor because the uncertainty with the interpretation process grows further than before. The business judgment rule of the American corporate law should be considered as the ground. And finally, the application process of IFRS can witness such problems as collision with the positive law, the time of revising and applying IFRS, and the effects and scope of application. Other legal issues potential in the application process of IFRS include whether to abolish the principle of calculating taxable income based on the confirmed balance sheets or not and making redeemable preferred stocks into debt. Those legal issues are so broad and complex that it's not easy to provide realistic and specific alternatives. This study has a limitation of not highlighting those issues, which should be investigated in follow－up study.
Keywords
- IFRS
- business judgment rule
- legal issue
- limitation of liability for damage
- auditor
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