As public sector accountants are busy finalising statutory accounts for the financial year just ended, this is a good time to ask whether all the effort, complexity and expense of producing these difficult to understand, costly to produce accounts, which are not relevant to ordinary people, is really worthwhile.
KPMG, appointed in October 2013, said: "We issued an audit opinion on the 2013 statutory accounts, which included a number of restatements.
Bookkeeping is the practise of simply keeping a record of all your receipts and invoices for the purpose of statutory accounts, VAT claiming and corporation tax.
Charlotte has worked at The Soldiers Charityy for two years as the financial controller, responsible for preparation of the management and statutory accounts, budgeting, financial controls, compliance, tax and VAT planning and technical support across the charity.
In a highly complex transaction, hidden from readers of the statutory accounts, Amazon.co.uk was passed in February 2006 by Amazon.com International Sales Inc to Amazon Europe Holding Technologies SCS, which owned it for a day before selling it to Amazon EU Sarl for €62m (£52m).
Alongside the funds held by land-owning groups, there are funds held on behalf of Indigenous people in various statutory accounts, such as the Aboriginals Benefit Account in the Northern Territory and the Land Account of the Indigenous Land Corporation established as part of the native title settlement agreed between Aboriginal leaders and the Australian government in 1993.
We have today issued a qualified audit opinion on the 2014 statutory accounts, which include various further restatements, both to apply more conservative accounting policies in some areas and to correct prior year errors, largely in relation to certain historical acquisitions, revenue and share transactions and disclosures in respect of 2011 to 2013".
The "book value" of the stadium from Hearts' statutory accounts in 2012 is listed at more than £13m.
Hodge then asked John Dixon, Head of Tax Policy, at Ernst & Young whether his staff walked around the offices of their clients to check they were conducting the activities in their UK offices that they described in statutory accounts and in statements to the tax authority.
It is, of course, necessary for public sector bodies to produce some form of accounts, but given the substantial costs of preparing and disseminating statutory financial accounts, questions need to be asked about who uses these accounts, whether they understand the information provided and whether it gives them anything of value.
At seminars and discussions with public sector managers and accountants, I often ask them whether they have ever looked at the statutory financial accounts of their local authority or local NHS trust in a personal role – as a resident, service user or citizen – as opposed to in their professional role as a manager or an accountant.
