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An International Meeting of American Accounting
Association
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Australia’s Adoption of International Accounting Standards: A Perspective from the Business Community |
Stewart Jones
The University of Sydney
Alison D. Higgins
Mission Australia
Abstract: This study reports the findings of a structured telephone survey on IFRS adoption from 60 firms drawn from among Australia’s top 200 corporations. While we find evidence of strong systematic variation in survey responses with factors such as firm size, industry background and expected impacts on financial performance, the general results indicate that many respondents have not been well prepared for the transition and are generally very skeptical about the claimed benefits of IFRSs as enunciated in the Government's CLERP reforms. The results have implications to other international reporting jurisdictions, particularly the EU, where adoption of IFRSs is already underway.