Accounting Principles and Conservatism

Accounting Principles and Conservatism

Hello everyone,

Week 1 DQ 2.  Due by Friday.  Accounting Principles.

Please respond to the following discussion question by replying to this thread.  Your response should fully address all elements of the question and be a minimum of 200 to 300 words long.

Chapter 1 discusses ethics in business and accounting.  The notes to the financial statements describe the accounting principles used by a company to record its transactions.  Accountants apply the convention of conservatism when analyzing economic events and recording them.  The following is a definition of conservatism:

In the application of accounting principles and the development of estimates, accountants should be conservative.  Given choices between various methods of recording economic events, accountants should apply principles that result in revenues being stated at lower amounts versus higher amounts and expenses being stated at higher amounts rather than lower amounts.  In general, accountants should apply accounting principles that would tend to understate revenues, net income and assets versus overstating them.

What are some of the ethical issues of selecting accounting principles for a company? Do you believe accountants have been properly conservative in the past few years with financial statement presentation?  Why?

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