The Research Of Domestic Enterprise Financial Statement Presentation Reform

With the rapid development of domestic economy, the listed companies are coming tothe age at diversified operation by setting foot in different industries. Financial report,which is the direct way to help information users understand corporation’s present situationand development prospect, its importance is self-evident. With the outbreak of theinternational financial crisis, the reliability and practicability of the financial report has beenquestioned. To that end, dominated by IASB and FASB, the international standard-settinginstitutions began to cooperate to study financial statements presentation reform and relatedissues and in2008, IASB and FASB jointly issued the “Preliminary opinion draft offinancial statements presentation reform”. The draft planned to make a big change inpresentation model and the division method of listed items, aiming at solving problems suchas financial data lack of practicability and prediction, statement do not close and so on. Thereform is going to meet the primary goal of financial report which suggested byIASB——meeting the demand of information user’s decision making.Under thisbackground, the reform of our country’s financial statements presentation will also begradually carried out along with the pace of international convergence. This article willdiscuss a series of issues related to reform of financial statement presentation based onmeeting the demand of information users to make decisions.This essay first introduce the research background and significance of topics, thereview of the literature of both at home and abroad, then on the basis to make anintroduction of this article’s writing thoughts, research methods and main innovation points.Then it introduces basic theory of the financial statement presentation reform, including theaccounting environment theory and accounting goal theory. China’s current financialstatement presentation give priority to concept of fiduciary duty, but the decision-usefulnessview will be the trend, which put forward the demand of the financial statementpresentation reform in China. Then, it introduces the main categories of information users and their respective needs, and on this basis it evaluates and analyze the problems anddefects of existing financial statements presentation. And also, the reform may encounterdifficulties and obstacles in the process such as lack of normative standards guidance,contradiction between information disclosure and trade secrets protection, and the essayputs forward some corresponding measures. It is concluded that the financial statementspresentation exists quite a few problems both on the presentation format and content’sbreadth and depth. In reference to the "draft" issued by IASB and FASB and on the basis offinancial statements listed relevant criteria, this article puts forward some proposals toreform in Chinese financial statement presentation. The reform of three main statement canmake a gradual way by the combining of “draft” guidance and actual situation of ourcountry. The “gradual” here not only mean the gradual change in presentation mode, butalso reflected in the expanding reform scale. The reform of the notes, in view of thesituation of cross-industry business, requires companies to disclosure more detailedfinancial information of subsidiary on the basis of the segment report, and according to thedisclosure of non-financial information, it promotes enterprise to voluntary disclosure suchas human resources information, more comprehensive intellectual capital resources, andsocial responsibility fulfillment situation and so on.Characteristic of this paper is to discussing reform aimed at meeting the demand ofinformation users of financial statements in our country which is further and more practicaland feasible than talking about the reform only aiming at the international convergence.This paper not only focus on the reform of listed items in the statements, but alsoconsidering note’s further disclosure of the subsidiary financial information andnon-financial information disclosure scope, which enrich the content of the financialstatement presentation. Finally, it makes an conclusion and put forward some policyestablishment to support the reform.