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We examine the relationship between tax-related accounting misstatements and changes in the uncertain tax benefits accrual account in the year of the disclosure of a misstatement. We find that the disclosure of a tax-related misstatement is associated with an increase in unrecognized tax benefits during that year. We show that the increase in unrecognized tax benefits in the year of disclosure is from uncertain tax positions taken in prior periods. Overall, this finding is consistent with increase in financial reporting conservatism upon disclosure of tax-related accounting misstatement.

Part V analyzes the details of how to assess materiality. It first tackles qualitative versus quantitative criteria and the role of professional judgment. It then analyzes the selection of quantitative threshold, to expand to the choice of benchmarks. It contrasts the whole financial statements with subaggregates, line items, and components.

Specific sections contrast IASB, FASB, SEC, and other guidance on materiality applied to comparative information, interim reporting, and segment reporting.

The section on estimates mingles complex guidance coming from accounting, auditing, and internal control over financial reporting to explain how the management can improve its assessment of materiality concerning estimates.

After explaining the techniques to move from individual to cumulative misstatements, the part tackles verification ex post, and finally summarizes the intricacies of whether immaterial misstatements are permissible and their consequences.

From the sociolinguistic perspective, the purpose of this paper is to examine whether the honorific and actual-name appellations that Chinese auditors use to address clients in audit reports connote differential financial misstatement risk. Specifically, the authors hypothesize that auditors’ use of honorifics signals their inferior social status relative to their clients, thereby leading to compromised auditor independence, lower audit quality, and higher financial misstatement risk.

The authors use a sample of manually coded appellation data from audit reports of Chinese public firms between 2003 and 2012 to conduct the research.

The authors find significantly greater financial misstatements, both in terms of likelihoods and magnitudes, for companies addressed by honorifics than for those addressed by actual names. Moreover, compared to auditors’ consistent honorific usage, discretionary honorific usage has a stronger positive association with misstatements. The authors further show that the positive association between honorific usage and client misstatement risk weakens when the audit firm is a Top 10 accounting firms in China, is an industry specialist, is formed as a partnership, or resides in a more concentrated audit market.

This study contributes to the sociolinguistics literature in accounting and provides evidence supporting the reform proposed by the International Auditing and Assurance Standards Board to enhance the usefulness of audit reporting.

Auditors should realize misstatements and communicate to managers for adjustments. Managers usually modify the misstatements, but they have motivations, like earnings management, for not altering the misstatements. The auditor expects to identify the misstatements’ earnings management, inform the managers and reduce earnings management by proposing adjustments. This study aims to determine whether identified and adjusted misstatements cause a decline in earnings management. Is the increase in the materiality of identified and adjusted misstatements associated with a reduction in earnings management?

The identified and adjusted misstatements are obtained from the difference between nonaudited financial statements and audited ones. Earnings management is computed using the adjusted Jones model, and the quantitative materiality threshold has also been calculated based on the Iranian auditors’ guidelines. These variables and other required information were gathered for 159 listed firms on the Tehran Stock Exchange during 2014–2019 and examined by the regression models.

The results show a negative relationship between identified and modified misstatements of total assets and earnings management and a positive and significant relationship between identified and adjusted misstatements of total liabilities and earnings management. However, the positive relationship between identified and adjusted misstatements of net income with earnings management is not significant. Besides, the relationship between the materiality difference and an absolute value of identified and adjusted misstatements (materiality minus the absolute value of misstatements) of total assets and earnings management is positive and significant, but the negative association between materiality difference and the absolute value of identified and adjusted misstatements of total assets and earnings management is not significant. The relationship between materiality difference and the absolute value of identified and adjusted net income and earnings management misstatements is negative and significant. These results indicate that the more material the identified and adjusted misstatements, the less earnings management.

The difference between nonaudited and audited financial statements represents identified and adjusted misstatements (audit adjustments). The client probably made some adjustments, but separating these adjustments from the auditor’s identified items was impossible with the available data.

The results show that significant audit adjustments decline earnings management. Paying more attention to a high-quality audit performed by the audit firms, auditors, managers and users and, consequently, discovering misstatements and adjusting or reporting them would decline the earnings management’s unfavorable impacts.

The unfavorable consequences of earnings management can cause the inappropriate transfer of wealth in the capital market and some investors’ loss to others’ benefit. These consequences can cause a loss of trust and leave unfavorable psychological effects on the capital market and society. Identifying and adjusting significant misstatements can lead to the decline of such impacts.

The previous studies assessed the relationship between identified and adjusted misstatements (audit adjustments) and earnings quality or earnings management. However, this study focuses on audit adjustments’ materiality to assess the impact of significant adjustments on earnings management.

The purpose of this paper is to provide evidence concerning the effective use of qualitative materiality factors (QMF) included in the new ISA 450, and its potential consequences from the perspective of Spanish independent auditors and preparers of financial statements.

A specially designed questionnaire was distributed to a sample of both (352) auditors and (121) preparers in Spain. Frequencies and ranking comparisons, Student's t‐tests, and Mann‐Whitney tests were used to analyse the data.

Results show that the majority of auditors and preparers that participated in the study agree on the issuance of qualified audit reports when the financial statements contain uncorrected misstatements that are below the materiality levels but are related to QMF included in ISA 450. Furthermore, both groups accept that this situation would have important positive effects on the development and results of current practice in auditing, on the quality of financial statements, and on both users and society.

First, as with all mail surveys, there are some limitations associated with individuals' responses. Second, the findings of this paper should be interpreted bearing in mind that the survey was conducted before the new ISA 450 was published in October 2008. Finally, this paper is limited to the Spanish context; thus, the findings may not be applicable elsewhere.

The findings of this paper have significant practical implications for auditors, as well as for policy makers, enabling them to better understand the importance of the qualitative side of materiality in auditing judgments.

From the perspective of both auditors and preparers, this paper provides evidence about the QMF included in the new ISA 450, effective for audits of financial statements for periods beginning on or after December 15, 2009.

The purpose of this paper is to study whether diverting auditors to erroneous accounts leads to higher effectiveness and detection of errors. Also, this paper investigates the effect of the need for cognitive closure of auditors on audit effectiveness and detection of errors in the presence of audit management.

The authors used a financial statement containing a diverting statement and several errors for measuring audit management and used a survey to measure auditors’ need for closure. Research sample consisted of 79 independent auditors having above three years of audit experience. The set of financial statement and questionnaire (measuring the need for closure of auditors) was given to auditors and they had enough time to fill them.

Results show that diverting auditors to accounts containing error does not lead to higher effectiveness and detection of errors. Also, auditors need for closure character does not affect their effectiveness and detection of errors in the financial statements.

Diverting auditors to erroneous accounts leads to higher detection of earning management. With this regard, the results increase the awareness of auditors that diverting auditors away from important errors to easy-to-detect erroneous accounts leads to their belief of achieving the audit objectives by detecting phony errors and misstatements. In other words, the results alert auditors of managers’ techniques of audit management.

This study contributes to the literature on audit management and need for cognitive closure of auditors in Iran’s audit environment and introduces these concepts to this environment. The paper will be of value to Association of Iranian Certified Public accountants to include stricter measure in appraisal of audit firms’ quality and educate its participants about audit management and mediating effect of the need for closure of auditors on the detection of errors and misstatements in financial statements.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between fraudulent financial reporting and firms' characteristics, i.e. size, type of ownership and audit quality in companies audited by the Inland Revenue Board of Malaysia (IRBM) after the implementation of a self assessment system in Malaysia.

The paper employs an empirical research design, using data on companies audited by IRBM. The hypotheses of the study are tested using both univariate and multivariate statistical methods.

It was found that company size and audit quality have significant negative relationships with fraudulent financial reporting.

The sample of companies used in this study is unlisted companies and the results are not generalisable to listed companies. Listed companies may have more stringent rules for listing and have better corporate governance mechanisms within the company as control.

The paper's findings may assist IRBM in identifying possible cases for audit in the future.

The paper describes the first empirical study that uses real tax cases where the non‐compliance with the Malaysian statues and tax laws are used as the measurement of the fraudulent financial reporting.

The purpose of this paper is to describe and analyze the accounting standards reforms that have moved the accounting profession away from rules‐based towards principles‐based accounting practice and financial reporting, and to explore the implications for boards of directors of fair value estimates of the unknowable contaminating financial statements with financial misstatements.

The paper critically reviews the internationally accepted accounting, auditing and financial reporting standards with respect to fair value accounting and relates them to directors' fiduciary duties – the duties of care, of oversight, and of obedience.

The search for relevance in financial accounting raises daunting challenges for boards of directors tasked with fairly presenting the financial condition of a reporting business entity.

The accounting profession has long been epistemologically conservative, judging reliability to be more important than relevance in the compiling of financial statements. With the fair value reforms, relevance has achieved ascendency over reliability. This necessitates an increase in the need for more research in the epistemology and ethics of accounting.

Boards of directors need to be well‐informed about, and fully engaged with, the assessment of the level of risk of material misstatement associated with the fair value accounting estimates, and with the adequacy of the related mandatory explanatory disclosures.

This paper's originality is grounded in its exploration of the epistemology of accounting in the light of the adoption of fair value conventions in the internationally accepted accounting, auditing and financial reporting standards and its drawing out of the implications this has for corporate governance.

The main objective on this research is providing evidence of the contagion effect of decreasing audit's quality. Audit failure affects the quality of the financial analysis that has been carried out and has a big impact on the accuracy of decision making due to the material information bias. Findings of this research will urge the Public Accounting Firm (PAF) to design a quality control of the audit services. This action is taken with the consideration of maintaining the quality of audit services and the reputation of auditors.

Utilizing manufacturing data listed on Bursa Efek Indonesia (BEI), the researchers developed a model to explain the audit failure which is seen from restatement of financial statement in the subsequent period.

This research indicates that audit failure to detect the misstatement will decrease the audit's quality of other companies audited by the same auditor. There is also an insight that contagion effect of decreasing auditor quality was stronger for non-big four and non-industry specialist auditors.

Audit failure still has the potential to occur. There is the potential that a failure in an audit of a particular client entity has an impact on defects of other clients served. If this allegation is proven, there are big challenges faced by the public accounting profession and PAF to pay special attention in order to maintain the professional reputation.

Professional body and government need to develop a robust standard and operating procedures as well as quality control on audit engagement.

Due to the intention of fraud occurred in Indonesia, namely SNP Finance and Garuda Indonesia case. It is important to learn from that cases. This research gives fruitful insights to prevent the same case in the future.

Both the international and US auditing Standards provide guidance to the auditor in searching for material misstatements caused by errors and fraud. Auditors, especially those with clients interested in cross‐border securities markets, should comprehend the similarities and differences in the requirements found in the Standards in these significant audit areas. A comparison of the international Standard for error and fraud to the two US Standards for these topics discloses numerous similarities and a few differences. The findings are reassuring to auditors serving clients with cross‐border interests. Whether the auditor is utilizing the international or the US guidance, comparable audit work in searching for misstatements arising from errors and fraud is being performed.