Russia. Can IFRS be considered accounting?

Abstract

What are the drivers for, and barriers to, IFRS adoption? It is not the fact that people are lazy and conservative that represents the key deterrent for IFRS adoption, but the nature of this system of standards. IFRS should not be treated as a new global guidance to accounting. IFRS represent a new way of thinking, new qualification, and new practice. Russian accountants came to this conclusion largely due to the works of Jacques Richard, a lot of them being translated into Russian and very popular with the readers. The result of IFRS analysis from a traditional accounting standpoint leads to the following conclusion: this system is not an accounting system but a micro statistics one because of data collection and processing methods. IFRS, just like statistics, are aimed at providing information to external users the range of which is unlimited. Accounting is organized by a company itself and is intended primarily for the use by owners and managers. Apart from the information objective it has the objective of control. Irreducibility of IFRS to accounting methods mean that they cannot replace national accounting standards but can only add to it as a new form of statistics.