Advantages Of Conservatism In Accounting

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Accounting conservatism has been established centuries ago. Since that time to nowadays this model was successfully implemented in daily accounting practice. Many experts identify conservatism as the principle of verified information: gain should be verified before recognized, but the principal allows accelerated recognition of losses. Generally, conservatism can be explained: “anticipate no profit, but anticipate all losses” (Watts, 2003). The nature of conservatism leads to differential treatment of keys aspects of accounting: gains and losses. With a recognition of all losses and only verified revenue cash flow, conservatism ignores unverified values, for example, intangible assets, such as goodwill. This asymmetry under conservatism principle allows accountants to understate net asset and net income as a key consequence (Watts, 2003). Ross L. Watts in his article “Conservatism in Accounting. Part I: Explanations and Implications” presents a significant amount of evidence of the usefulness of conservatism in Accounting. The most crucial advantage …show more content…

It is hard to argue about its role in Accounting as well in past centuries. However, the financial world has been changed. It became more complicated and less predictable. Investors demand more reliable information. They want to see their returns if they invest money in the particular companies. All these factors require estimation of future cash inflows based on the economic situation on the market. Conservatism principles should be developed with the evolution of the financial world in order to provide required information to investors and creditors. In my opinion, the Conceptual Framework is a beginning of new era in the Accounting. Unfortunately, it is hard to say if this system works or not. The implementation of the system has just been started and it will need time to analyze and build our

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