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The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of qualitative materiality factors on auditors’ assessment of materiality and the determination of the type of the auditors’ reports. This paper also analyzes whether differences in personal characteristics of auditors can influence their use of qualitative materiality factors in assessing material misstatements.

A questionnaire and experimental case studies were undertaken to determine whether differences in personal characteristics of auditors can influence their degree of reliance on qualitative factors in assessing the materiality of detected misstatements. Descriptive and statistical tests were used to analyze the data collected.

The results of this paper show that qualitative materiality factors strongly influence the auditor’s materiality judgments. However, no significant differences were found regarding the effects of auditors’ personal characteristics on the degree to which they rely on the qualitative factors in their materiality judgments. Also, in certain situations, auditors considered factors other than the income for assessing certain misstatements as material and consequently modified their audit reports.

This paper examines the influence of qualitative factors on auditors’ materiality judgments and develops a list of qualitative factors to be considered by auditors when assessing materiality. It also concludes that the nature of misstatement is the least important qualitative factor considered by auditors when assessing materiality of detected misstatements and that the existence of more explicit or standardized qualitative materiality guidelines would lead to a more uniform judgment among auditors.

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.

Audits of long‐term insurers are complex, high‐risk engagements. The auditor’s consideration of materiality has a direct impact on the quality of such audits. So far, however, no research has been published on the application of materiality in audits of long‐term insurers. This study examines various aspects of planning materiality in the audits of listed South African long‐term insurers on the basis of responses to a questionnaire, taking into account issues identified from the literature reviewed. A number of recommendations are made on the basis of the findings. Largely on the basis of the results of this study, the South African Institute of Chartered Accountants has commissioned a project to revise existing guidance for auditors.

The study aims to explore the reasons behind external auditors' failure to detect and report fraud.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with twenty-four experienced Big 4 auditors.

The present study reveals power issues within audit firms and how some dishonest audit partners deal with auditors' concerns at the higher echelons. It also shows how auditors are pressured and intimidated by audit clients when fraud-related issues are raised. Further, it sheds light on ethical, governance and regulatory issues inhibiting auditors’ ability to detect or report fraud.

This study advances the audit literature by adding practice-based evidence on why external auditors fail to discover fraud.

The results draw policymakers' attention to the issues that inhibit external auditors' ability to discover fraud in practice which could help policymakers develop effective interventions. Additionally, it provides several recommendations which could aid policymakers and audit firms in designing effective audit reforms to resolve the fraud detection deficit.

This is the first study exploring external auditors' views on their failure to detect and report fraud and how the conflict of interests operates in the audit practice.

To complete this case, students will need to access financial statements from the Securities and Exchange Commission’s webpage. The links are provided. Students will also need to review the conceptual framework that is typically covered in Intermediate 1 to respond to question 5.

This case is based on the three financial statement restatements that Weatherford International Ltd. made over an approximately 18-month period. The restatements were due to a fraud committed by manipulating the income tax accrual in the financial statements. The manipulation used was to overstate the amount of income used to calculate the dividend exclusion and then use a relatively high tax rate to calculate the resulting tax benefit. The tax rate used for the fraud was substantially more than Weatherford’s effective tax rate (ETR), which was a prominent part of the company’s strategic growth plan. The tax senior with the external auditors who reviewed the entry made for the dividend exclusion captured the inconsistency with the comment that “This [the entry] deserves a huh?” The case is intended for students in Intermediate 2, where financial statement restatements and their effect on the company’s financial statements are typically covered. During the years covered in this case, Weatherford was also under investigation for violations of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act (FCPA). Weatherford’s FCPA violations included multiple instances of bribery, the inappropriate use of volume discounts, improper payments and kickbacks in the United Nation’s Oil for Food program. Weatherford received the eighth-largest fine in the history of FCPA violations (at that time) of $152m. Weatherford’s FCPA investigation expanded, and the company paid another $100m in fines for violations of sanctions law and export control law. This case focuses only on the fraudulent manipulation of the financial statements through the tax accrual and does not delve into the other investigations. However, the linkage between those investigations and the fraud in this case is Weatherford’s nonexistent internal controls.

This case was designed to be used in Intermediate 2 financial accounting classes to highlight financial statement restatements and review the conceptual framework and materiality. The students who used the case did not have difficulty with the tax aspect of the case. However, most of the students had taken one tax class previously or concurrently. If students have not had any exposure to tax, the instructor might want to walk students through the tax aspects of the case.

Part II contrasts the views of materiality in the Conceptual Frameworks of the IASB, FASB, IPSAS, and other framework such as the Integrated Reporting. In particular, it analyzes at what level and how differently that concept interacts with the qualitative characteristics of financial information in each of those frameworks. It looks at its pervasiveness and entity specificity, the interlock with the concept of relevance, reliability and faithful representation, completeness, understandability, neutrality, and drills down to the link to recognition.

This part then compares the definitions of materiality in different standards and contexts, to then draw a taxonomy of materiality and its attributes, such as the subject matter, thecontext of assessment, the addressees, the assessor, and the materiality test. A large part of the analysis involves the comparison between legal definitions of materiality and characterizations in the accounting, financial, and larger management contexts.

Materiality is a critical and challenging auditing concept. To help auditors improve their materiality judgments, the authors provide examples from Judaism, primarily due to its longevity and the richness and variety of its stories. The authors show how Judaism interprets and applies materiality in many contexts. For each, the authors provide guidance on how auditors might apply these lessons to improve their materiality judgments. The authors examine five areas where Judaic examples can inform modern auditing including: (1) considering both quantitative and qualitative measures; (2) recognizing that small quantitative changes can lead to material qualitative effects; (3) understanding that ignoring small issues can become a slippery slope; (4) considering the importance of financial statement users’ needs in developing materiality criteria; and (5) prioritizing substance over form. In all examples, context is a critical factor to consider when applying materiality. These results should be of interest to auditors, financial statement users and others.

In 1954, the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) Committee on Accounting Procedure released an auditing book, which listed under the heading “Material” certain items of which it cautioned “material errors” could occur (AICPA, 1954, p. 1). From this date until the present, the accounting profession has struggled in its endeavors to find both a suitable definition and associated guidance to determine the materiality of information provided to financial statement users. Accordingly, in September 2015, the Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB) issued two exposure drafts that address the concept and interpretation (our emphasis) of materiality. The releases are Proposed Amendments to Statement of Financial Accounting Concepts, Conceptual Framework for Financial Reporting; Chapter 3: Qualitative Characteristics of Useful Financial Information (Financial Accounting Standards Board (FASB), 2015a) and Proposed Accounting Standards Update, Notes to Financial Statements (Topic 235) Assessing Whether Disclosures Are Material (FASB, 2015b). In this article, the authors focus on the Chapter 3 amendments (FASB, 2015a), which proposes a new definition whose genesis is based on the US Supreme Court definition of the concept. Accordingly, the authors examined the views of two stakeholders in the US financial reporting system, auditors in large public accounting firms, and Chief Financial Officers of the Fortune 1000 companies, regarding their perceptions of the proposed definition. The authors developed the research instrument to evaluate their perceptions of the proposed definition’s potential impact on various aspects of the audit and financial reports. The authors found that both populations have negative perceptions of the materiality definition in the exposure draft and an interpretation of the responses did not indicate an addition of any benefits from its adoption. Subsequent to our solicitation for our subjects’ opinions, the FASB voted unanimously in November 2017 to remove the reference to materiality as a legal concept (FASB, 2017) and in August 2018 (FASB, 2018) amended FASB Concept Statement No. 8 to replace the materiality definition with language similar to the previously superseded FASB Concept Statement No. 2. However, as the authors will explain in this article, the fact that three authoritative definitions exist, which continue to present problems for financial statement preparers and auditors. In this analysis, the authors find evidence that auditors and investors continue to see a significant difference between the terminology of “users” and “reasonable resource provider” within the various materiality definitions.

This paper seeks to focus on the issue of materiality judgements and the need for public disclosure of materiality levels. Insights about the concept of materiality are drawn from the words of users of audited financial reports, auditee managements, suppliers to the market for audit services and auditing standard setters and regulators.

This paper reports findings arising from face‐to‐face office interviews with individuals representing identified groups of stakeholders in the market for audit services about the issue of “materiality” as this concept is applied in auditing. The interviews canvassed many issues related to audit as part of a larger project entitled “The future of audit”.

In general, stakeholders perceive that the concepts involved in audit materiality are not well understood and they point to the difficulty in providing educative materiality about it, especially in relation to qualitative materiality, to retail investors in particular. There are mixed views as to whether the actual level of tolerable error, as per one of the meanings of materiality in the audit space, should be disclosed, with some feeling that it might be detrimental or dangerous.

If incremental information about materiality is to be disclosed, the issue of where, what to whom, by whom and when arise. Various suggestions are made by stakeholders in respect of these questions.

The paper concludes by drawing from the insights gained by the authors through the comments of participant stakeholders to make recommendations that deal with the issue of audit materiality.

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.