To establish and perfect the accounting standards, financial accounting conceptual framework plays an important role in the process, one of which is that conceptual framework can promote the rationality of the consistency of accounting standards and accounting practice. While accounting standards are controversial because they can not guarantee consistency and internal logic consistency. This essay will firstly discuss the concepts of conceptual framework and accounting standards, plus the comparison between them. Following this, it will explain the birth of conceptual framework and show a little uses of it at the same time. Finally, it will look at how the development and use of conceptual framework solve the problem of inconsistency in accounting practice.
Concepts and comparison概念与比较
财务会计概念框架简称为“财务会计和报告概念框架”,通常简称CF(Rocco,2009年,第120页)。 CF是由一系列基本概念组成的理论体系,其中说明了财务会计并被其使用。 CF能够评估现有的会计准则,指导和制定未来的会计准则。
The financial accounting conceptual framework is ‘Conceptual framework for Financial Accounting and Reporting’ for short, usually referred to as CF for convenience (Rocco, 2009, p.120). CF is a theory system comprised of a series of basic concepts, which illustrate financial accounting and be used by them. CF is able to evaluate existing accounting standards, coach and develop future accounting standards.
会计准则是会计和会计报告的标准化档案。以会计处理为依据,公平合理,不同时期或不同主体会计结果形成对比。根据不同的分类标准,会计准则可分为利润组织会计准则和非营利组织会计准则或基本标准和具体标准(Brandon,2013,p.523)。While accounting standard is a file to standardize accounting and accounting reports. It aims to base accounting treatment on fairness and reasonableness, and make contrasts of accounting results in different periods or different main bodies possible. According to different classification standards, accounting standards can be divided into profit organization accounting standards and non-profit organization accounting standards or the basic standard and specific standards (Brandon, 2013, p.523).
What should be stressed is that basic concepts comprised of CF are definitely not a figment or imaginary. It is extracted from the concept of accounting theory with mutual coupling, closely related information to be in combination of organic whole. Its purpose is to reduce the endless accounting problems to the issue directly related to accounting standards and accounting practice operation in order to answer theory problems of the accounting standards in time of the formulation and execution. Since the conceptual framework is the specification and guidance of the theoretical basis of accounting standards, it itself is not accounting standards. From a report of FASB, it can be concluded that unlike accounting standards, conceptual framework does not require being generally accepted accounting principles. So the CF is theory used to standardize the accounting instead of the guidelines of standard accounting practice. CF is the theoretical basis of accounting standards and is part of the accounting theory.
Origin of CF CF的起源
The American accounting profession is under the pressure of government control for a long time. Taking the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) for example, the SEC has the legal authority to enjoy the right to manage financial statement data which the listed company must submit. It is a threat of unemployed or losing monopoly rent to the accounting profession. To persuade the SEC not to interfere in the activities of the accounting profession too much, the most effective excuse is still a theory, a theory supports that accounting should not be regulated by the government, or that government tight constraints and control will hurt the development of American economic.
For providing a theoretical basis in formulating accounting standards and strengthening the study of accounting theory, American Institute of Cert