TJN submission on international accounting standards

The Tax Justice Network has just made a submission to the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB) on accounting standards. We have written extensively on this in the past, and especially on the need for country by country reporting.

This submission makes many points, one of the most important of which is that the accounting standards setters currently use only a very narrow view of stakeholders when they consider to whom company accounts might be useful. As our submission says:

"We suggest that to confuse the public interest with the interests of present and potential capital providers is a category error."

Richard Murphy explores this in more detail, here. In his explanation, he notes this:

Time was when submissions to the International Accounting Standards Board on an exposure draft would come form accounting institutes and large companies.

Not any longer.

The closing date for submissions on the key first two chapters of the new conceptual framework for accounting was on 29 September. There were 112 submissions. Of course the usual suspects were all there. But so too were The Tax Justice Network, Christian Aid, Action Aid, Publish What You Pay, Oxfam, Save the Children - UK, Transparency International, Tax Research LLP, Global Witness, Intermón Oxfam, Revenue Watch Institute.

How times are changing.