The Study On Footnotes And Relevant Problems Based On CAS30-Presentation Of Financial Statements

With the rapid development of market economy, and the appearance of new transactions and deals, financial statements forms, as an internationally employed language of business, provide the users with useful information and thus play an increasingly important role in the development of economy. However, due to the fact that the main content of financial statements is numbers, the information provided by them has some limitations.The footnotes of financial statements forms, as an important part of the latter, with its advantage in providing information, is gaining more and more attention from more and more people. Whether they are investor or managers, they all cherish the hope that the content of the footnotes knowledge about the strategies, production scales, and human resources and so on via their study on the footnotes because these kinds of information cannot be reflected by mere numbers. With the higher and higher instability of corporate activities and the expansion of the information outside forms, the accounting information of corporations cannot be reflected accurately by some mere forms and therefore the footnotes become necessary. Now the era of footnotes is at hand and in some developed countries, the length of the footnotes even exceeds that of the forms as such.On 15th Feb. 2006, The China's Accounting Standard was issued by the Ministry of Finance. Compared with the previous ones, this standard makes some specific rules for the disclosure of information via footnotes in CAS30. This realized the constellation of the rules concerning the financial statements forms and it is a system compatible with the construction of socialist economy. This paper is intended for the research on footnotes and relevant problems, with the new accounting standard by the Ministry of Finance as a starting point.A comprehensive literature review is performed concerning the disclosure of information in the footnotes. In domestic studies, the researches performed by Chen Shaohua on the financial statements problems of corporate fiancé, those performed by Wang Guohai on the present state of affairs and defects of the disclosure of information via footnotes and those by Zhu Yuanwu, Chen Yu and Mao Zhihong on the improvement and possible future models stand out. Foreign literature focuses more on the perspectives of voluntary and compulsory disclosure of information. Specifically speaking, Palepu, Chow Meek and Roberts & Gray focused more on voluntary disclosure of information while William R. Scott founded the theoretical basis for the compulsory disclosing of information from the perspective of market failure and fair disclosure of information. The series of financial scandals happened in these years make it a must to regulate the disclosure of information via footnotes. By way of summing up the above-mentioned literature, the research direction and research content of this paper are specified.The main part of this paper focuses on the general statement of the CAS30 and special attention has been paid to the new changes concerning the disclosure of information via footnotes after the enforcement of the new standard. Here the theoretical significance as well as the practical connotation of the changes are deeply and thoroughly analyzed and their influence on the quality of the information disclosed is also evaluated.Some changes occur concerning the framework of the financial statements forms and now these forms should at least include the forms for the changes of ownership and the footnotes system is also included.The characteristics of just accounting are also introduced. Financial accounting is a process of confirming recording and reporting accounting elements, among which recording occupies a prominent position. With the development of the actual practice of accounting in China, many accounting basis besides historical cost is introduced into the standard system, for example, resetting costs, variable net value, present value, just value, etc.The concept of financial tool is also introduced. The investment business of corporations includes: the cession of part of the capital of corporations to other business, i.e. long-term investment; the investment of certain cash capital into financial assets and this falls into the category of financial tool. These two forms have different investment aims and the forms of the increase of wealth also differ.With the development of economy and the change of the perceptions of investment, investmental real asset is becoming commonplace. Historically, people regard investmental real asset as common real asset and depreciate it against the estimated years of use. However, this net value cannot reflect the real value of the investmental real asset. Investmental real asset, with its huge amount of investment, long duration and low ability to cash, have the feature of high profit as well as high risk. Under such circumstances, to regard it as common real asset is obviously improper. Therefore, it should be isolated from the original real asset and be regulated separately.Anticipatory cost for discarding is an important embodiment for the concern of environmental protection in the new regulation. This now only applies to the discarding of asset in certain businesses, for example, the oil and water wells in petrol industry and the industry of natural gas, the wastes from nuclear power plants, etc. What's more, the responsibility of the costs for discarding is also specified in national laws and administrative regulations.In the rapid development of knowledge economy, bodiless capital is playing a more and more prominent role in the operation of businesses and it has caught people's attention on this respect. It has a particularly important influence on the development of the high-tech corporations in China. The distinction between the costs for research and those for development has special importance. Because business credit does not conform to the characteristics of bodiless capital, it should be singled out.In order to regulate the accounting process and disclosing of information concerning the payments and bonus to secure the service of the employees, the present regulation pays attention to the income and salary of the employee on this aspect.With the rapid development of our national economy and the violent fluctuation of prices, the confirmation of the depreciation of corporate capital is a must in order to lower the risks in decision-making. Therefore, researches on the depreciation of asset have been rapidly developed and we have also issued some relevant regulations to tackle this problem.With the increasing furthering of the reforms of accounting system and taxation system, the principles of relative independence and relative separation have been represented in the new accounting regulation and the tax law, leading to the increasing discrepancy between the accounting profit and the taxable profit. Under this circumstance, the ways to tackle the discrepancy between the accounting profit and the taxable profit have also caught the academic attention. The balance sheet is employed in the new regulation and this is expected to help solve this difficulty.Due to the influence of the associate transactions on the policy-making of the information users in the stock market, the associate transactions between corporations that have come into the market are also a hot issue. In the financial reports of these corporations, information concerning the associate transactions is an important point. The reregulation of the disclosing of the associate partners in the new regulation helps to regulate the disclosing of information in the stock market and commands significance in the improving of practicability of accounting information, the enhancement of supervision over taxation, the avoidance of manipulations by the associate partners as well as the strengthening of the international coordination of the management of accounting.Higher standards have been laid down concerning the disclosing of the accounting policy, the shift of accounting estimation and the correction of the prophase errors. The substantial errors are addressed and replaced by the prophase errors. The prophase errors include calculation mistakes, wrong application of accounting policies, negligence or distortion of facts and embezzlement, etc.Because of the fact that the information disclosed in footnotes is big in amount, complex in content and flexible in forms, the standardization and effectiveness of the disclosure of information via footnotes will have a direct effect on the quality of accounting information. Attention has also been given to the relevant problems in the making of annotations under the new regulative system and it is hoped that this effort will provide a useful reference for the making of the annotations concerning the corporations that have come into the market.CAS30 definites the structure and contents of footnotes,especially it regulates newly borned economic transactions and important items of financial statements.It provides a general idea and concrete manual,and it solves the problems which lies in the disclosure of financial statements efficiently.This article tries to find the ways of enhancing the value of the accounting information after implementing the new standard ,and to improve the quality of disclosure furthermore.