Disclosure Obligations Related To The Balance Sheet In The Hungarian And International Accounting

Nowadays, the accelerated globalisation influences the behaviour of numerous economic operators; in this connection, it can be certainly said that the globalisation affects the accounting regulation as well. It can be said about each entity that the awareness is a sine qua non for the successful operation thereof. To obtain this, both the enterprise and its environment require a reliable and uniform information system so that the enterprises can be judged and assessed. This need is met by the accounting of enterprises which appears in Act C of 2000 on Accounting in Hungary and mainly in the standards of IFRS and US-GAAP in other countries. The Hungarian and international accounting rules are divergent from each other on numerous points. There is a criticism of reports appearing in the Accounting Act that the balance sheet and income statement include historical data thus the extractable information therefrom is less suitable for possible rapid interventions. However, its aim is not to do so but to include such information about the property, financial and profitability situation which are needed for the owners, investors and creditors in order to present a true and fair view; this is greatly facilitated by the Notes on the Accounts. The abovementioned criticism does not necessarily apply to the reports according to IFRS. In nature, the reports similarly pertain to a specific date i.e. the balance sheet date; however, the report itself tries to display the vision of the enterprise in several places. In my treatise, I will highlight a part of the report, namely the Notes on the Accounts, which provide text information in addition to the numerical data. In the Hungarian system, the Accounting Act includes the entities’ compulsory elements in the Notes on the Accounts while the structure of IFRS is divergent from this: the disclosure obligations presented in the Notes on the Accounts relating to the given standard are defined at the end of each standard. Within this, I will present those mandatory disclosure obligations related to the balance sheet which are indispensable tools of informing the external and internal operators adequately.