This book contains edited versions of thirty British legal cases involving accounting issues decided from 1849-1888. These cases are a valuable source of information about the development of accounting principles and practices in nineteenth-century Great Britain. The thirty cases show that the court decisions involved a rich variety of accounting issues. In some cases courts upset private contractual stipulations regarding accounting and dividend matters. In others, management was held to have used incorrect principles in computing profits. Whether or not a contract or management decision was upset, the courts often discussed at some length the principles that management should apply in the preparation of balance sheets or income statements. It is therefore obvious that in resolving issues of equity among participants in British companies, the courts were applying normative accounting principles.
This book contains edited versions of thirty British legal cases involving accounting issues decided from 1849-1888. These cases are a valuable source of information about the development of accounting principles and practices in nineteenth-century Great Britain. The thirty cases show that the court decisions involved a rich variety of accounting issues. In some cases courts upset private contractual stipulations regarding accounting and dividend matters. In others, management was held to have used incorrect principles in computing profits. Whether or not a contract or management decision was upset, the courts often discussed at some length the principles that management should apply in the preparation of balance sheets or income statements. It is therefore obvious that in resolving issues of equity among participants in British companies, the courts were applying normative accounting principles.
In the UK today the form and content of accounts published by limited companies are closely regulated. In the 19th century the position was different: the popular view was that such matters were for private negotiation between owners and management. Nevertheless, there was a great deal of discussion of the need for regulations, which were actually imposed in a number of areas. This book provides readers with the essence of the many debates that took place, the conclusions reached and the action taken to regulate company accounts.
Global in scope, accounting has had its share of great thinkers and practitioners, from Luca Pacioloi, the father of accounting, to R. J. Chambers, W. W. Cooper, Yuji Ijiri, Stephen A. Zeff and other figures. This encyclopedia presents more than 400 entries that focus on such subjects as publications in the field, institutional bodies, accounting and economic concepts, accounting issues, authors in accounting, records, leaders in the profession, accounting in various countries, financial court cases, accounting exams and historical researchers.
This book contains 53 nineteenth century American legal cases in which courts discussed accounting issues. Some are well known: Wood v. Drummer (1824) was the foundation for the idea that capital could not be returned to shareholders and it was this restriction which made it necessary to distinguish between income and capital. The famous case of 1849, Burnes v Pennell is often cited as the source of the rule that dividends cannot be paid except from profits. However, many of the cases covered in this book are not well-known. It is often assumed that few American legal cases on accounting matters were decided in the nineteenth century. However, many of the 53 cases included here preceded the earliest British legal cases that discussed accounting issues and they are interesting for several reasons. They show that government regulation of accounting pre-dated the modern regulatory ear. They also illustration that sometimes private contracts specified a particular accounting treatment and that accounting, therefore, served to define private rights. They also illustrate that American courts discussed accrual accounting problems as early as 1837 and that a cash concept of profits was not the norm.
The 43 papers in this collection, originally published from 1972 to 1987 delve into accounting, observing and exploring its functioning. They construct a basis for interrogating it in use and indeed they attempt to account for accounting. The author seeks to understand accounting, to appreciate what it is, what it does and how it does it, examining it from without rather than from within.
This book is a practical textbook for first-year students. It begins by describing the nature and environment of accounting and continues with an examination of the double entry book-keeping system. There are chapters on the principles which govern accounting practice and the presentation and interpretation of accounts. Inflation accounting is also covered as are cash budgets and funds flow.
This book focuses on the way in which businessmen responded to the new problem of accounting for fixed assets when measuring periodic profit. The book is divided into four sections: the first embraces items that examine asset valuation procedures in general use during the nineteenth century. The second focuses on the particular practices that became popular among public utility companies. The third comprises studies on influences, particularly legal ones on the treatment of fixed assets in company accounts. The final section examines the likely economic effect of using particular valuation procedures and is another area where available material is scarce. Of the twenty-seven items included, seven were written during the nineteenth century and the remainder during the twentieth. Their emphasis is practical rather than theoretical: they set out the various ways in which companies accounted for fixed assets and provide some explanation for the choices made.
This book explores certain contemporary problems of accounting through the eyes and pens of historians. Many accounting problems are not new ones and it is therefore important to understand their history and development through the ages. This book places twentieth century studies in context and provides clues to possible solutions. The focus of this book is on companies and their financial reports and will be of use to students of economic and business history who wish to provide themselves with an accounting background in relation to the financial reports of companies they may be studying.
Beginning with first principles, then discussing the origin and evolution of the debate over depreciation, capital and income, several related topics are addressed in this volume originally published in 1993. These include the allocation problem, interest rate approximations, issues concerning financial reporting and analysis and the meaning and economic impact of ‘accounting error’. The underlying themes concern the importance of history and the need for an appreciation of basic concepts and relationships in accounting
This anthology comprises a selection of articles which demonstrates the explanatory potential of company records as source material for the accounting historian. They were published in the UK and the USA between 1954 and 1984. The articles reproduced are based on the records of what is the modern business enterprise and they identify and explain the development of external financial reporting procedures.
