SOME INSIGHTS REGARDING CREATIVE ACCOUNTING IN ROMANIAN ACCOUNTING ENVIRONMENT - REGULATORS, FINANCIAL AUDITORS AND PROFESSIONAL BODIES OPINION

Abstract

This empirical study reports the results of a survey designed to explore the existence and magnitude of creative accounting practices in the Romanian accounting environment using as a reference point the opinion of some of the top representative accounting professionals like: financial auditors, regulators and professional bodies representatives of the Chamber of Financial Auditors of Romania and also representative of the Body of Expert and Licensed Accountants of Romania. \\r\\nSince the existence of creative accounting practices are connected in accounting with issues of vulnerability and in some cases panic getting to know its magnitude can be regarded of higher importance. In this respect we were interested to see if our respondents can document its existence and magnitude based on their experience. In order to achieve this goal our methodology employed neutral and direct interviews based on closed questions questionnaire. \\r\\nThe results of our empirical study documented that the credibility of accounting profession in the Romanian accounting environment is not affected by items like creative accounting since all our respondents asserted that is not facile to employ creative accounting schemes in the practice of accounting. One particular question was concerned about the ease of detection of creative accounting practices. In this respect we interrogated our respondents and all had similar opinions that in order to detect those practice skilled professionals are needed and more than that the desire to engage in this demarche since it is not specified particularly in the law.\\r\\nWhen it comes to creative accounting schemes that our respondents could identify in their day to day work they shared similar views: items like profit overstatement and profit undervaluation, income tax and leasing can be included frequently in those schemes. On the other hand practices of creative accounting that include goodwill, provisions and developments costs are not found in a significant proportion in the Romanian economic environment. \\r\\n \\r\\ncreative accounting, creative accounting practices, credibility, existence, magnitude