• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.15
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• pp.1-18
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• 2004

It was 1976 when the preparation of consolidated financial sheet was first prescribed in this nation. Since then, the prescription has been revised several times. Revised in April 1992, enforcement regulations of the Securities Exchange Act provided that every listed corporation has its consolidated financial sheets and an auditor's opinion about them attached to its business report. In other words, the outside audit of consolidated financial sheets became inevitable. The Act of the Outside Audit of Corporation was revised in December 1993 to provide that all corporations must prepare consolidated financial sheets and receive the outside audit of the documents beginning their settlement of accounts in December 1994. In case of overseas corporations, consolidated financial sheets and the Equity Law have been applied since their settlement of accounts in December 1995. Now those sheets must be prepared by all local and overseas corporations that involve relations of governance or dependence. The preparation and public notification of consolidated financial sheets has been settled as a system. This nation has not yet introduced consolidated tax return using consolidated financial sheets. Such tax return system is already being used by most of the world's economic powers such as U.S., Europe and Japan. This study shows that reduction in corporation tax is the biggest reason for avoiding consolidated tax return system, even though the system can facilitate the settlement of consolidated accounting. Consolidated tax return, which is being implemented in about 20 countries including U.S., needs to be introduced by this nation where consolidated financial sheets are publicly notified.

• Management & Information Systems Review
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• v.8
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• pp.167-186
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• 2002

Since first introduced on July 1974, consolidated financial statements had been concluded or not depending on decision-makings by companies. But the Securities and Exchange Law as revised on April 1992 specified that any listed corporation must add consolidated financial statements and their auditor's opinion to its business report. foreign-based corporations became subject to the conclusion of the sheets and equity method from the time of business closing on Dec. 1995. Now all of domestic and foreign-based corporations, whether they are controlling or controlled businesses, are subject to consolidated financial statements. Business bankruptcies and restructuring under the economic crisis since the late 1997 raised the necessity of the increased reliability and transparency of consolidated accounting information and significantly changed contents of consolidated audit report. An analysis over the past three years shows that auditor's opinions about consolidated financial sheets are mostly qualified opinions whose proportion is being gradually decreased, while rejected opinions are annually increasing in proportion. When compared to the year of 1998, the numbers of those controlled businesses, and companies under the equity method were all decreased, but rather increased when determined on the basis of such numbers per a corporation. This suggests that corporations are promoting business diversification through business separation and share acquisition and advancing into foreign markets as well as domestic ones. Especially, special contents included in consolidated auditing report show a tendency to increase annually. Based on all these findings, the strengthening of accounting regulation will lead to providing more reliable information related to auditor's opinion about consolidated financial statements and raising the information effectiveness and validity of the statements as publicly notified.