Abstract
What are the drivers for, and barriers to, IFRS adoption? It is not the fact that people are lazy and conservative that represents the key deterrent for IFRS adoption, but the nature of this system of standards. IFRS should not be treated as a new global guidance to accounting. IFRS represent a new way of thinking, new qualification, and new practice. Russian accountants came to this conclusion largely due to the works of Jacques Richard, a lot of them being translated into Russian and very popular with the readers. The result of IFRS analysis from a traditional accounting standpoint leads to the following conclusion: this system is not an accounting system but a micro statistics one because of data collection and processing methods. IFRS, just like statistics, are aimed at providing information to external users the range of which is unlimited. Accounting is organized by a company itself and is intended primarily for the use by owners and managers. Apart from the information objective it has the objective of control. Irreducibility of IFRS to accounting methods mean that they cannot replace national accounting standards but can only add to it as a new form of statistics.
Indeed, there have to be factions among you
1 Corinthians 11–19
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Notes
- 1.
My colleagues among Russian accountants especially like to cite Richard’s following statement: “IFRS has no future and it follows that in a lot of ways they are outdated” [Richard, 2011: 7].
- 2.
See definition of this term in Richard (2012: 15–16).
- 3.
Framework for the preparation and presentation of financial statements.
- 4.
“Accounting is applied statistics”, J.F. Schär wrote, “as it functions as a self-controller of the situation, on the one hand, and on the other hand, reveals” the change in values, their cause and effect (quotation by Ivanov 1915, p. 101).
- 5.
Quotation Kuraev 1997, p. 28.
- 6.
According to the framework of IFRS reporting, assets are defined as follows: “resources controlled by an entity as a result of events of previous periods where the entity expects economic benefit in the future” (IASB (2001) Framework: 49).
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Sokolov, V. (2016). Russia. Can IFRS Be Considered Accounting?. In: Bensadon, D., Praquin, N. (eds) IFRS in a Global World. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28225-1_14
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