CONSIDERATIONS ON THE TREATMENT OF QUALITATIVE CHARACTERISTICS OF ACCOUNTING INFORMATION AT THE INTERNATIONAL LEVEL AND IN VARIOUS NATIONAL ACCOUNTING SYSTEMS

Abstract

The qualitative characteristics of accounting information presented by financial-accounting reports represent a concept which was subsequently introduced in the national legal accounting framework and, as a rule, the national conceptual frameworks represent the documents by means of which these quality criteria are established. At a worldwide level, there are more international or national organisms that have an important role in the elaboration of accounting standards in general and more specifically in the formulation of qualitative characteristics of financial reporting. We find two important ones among them, and these are: International Accounting Standards Board, which creates and promotes International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS), and Financial Accounting Standards Board, which elaborates Generally Accepted Accounting Principles (US GAAP). However, at the level of each country a standardizing authority decides the rules for producing the financial reports and the qualitative characteristics that must be respected by the information contained in these documents. In this context, this paper aims to present a few general considerations concerning the treatment of the qualitative characteristics of the financial-accounting information in different accounting systems, such as the American one, or the British, French, German, Romanian ones, with insistence on the international approach to qualitative characteristics.