REPORTING COMPREHENSIVE INCOME ISSUES EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM GHANA

Abstract

The issue of reporting comprehensive has generated lots of debate in the accounting and finance literature in a bid to find a common ground for international harmonization of financial statements. The debate ranges from relevance of CI, through format to basic contents of the statement of profit or loss and other comprehensive. This the IASB tends to address by issuing IAS 1 revised (2007 and 2011). This Study intends to interrogate the issues raised in IAS 1 revised and the academic literature using the 2013 annual financial statement as published on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE). The issues that were investigated include; title or denomination used, single or two statement approach, expense classification and contents of the statement of ‘profit or Loss and other comprehensive income’. The results show that there is a high degree of homogeneity in accounting practices in Ghana, making it easier for financial information users to compare entities. Thus, making a strong case for the need for IASB and FASB to co-operate in setting financial reporting standards. Further, we find that the classification of expense by function by majority of the entities in the sample may due to the nature of those entities.