European Financial Reporting: The Netherlands

As the world's foremost exponent of current cost accounting, The Netherlands has made a unique contribution to the development of current European accounting practice. This volume in the "European Financial Reporting" series, written by two experts on accounting in The Netherlands, aims to provide a detailed and authoritative guide to the institutions, conventions and regulations that govern reporting in this country. The Netherlands was in 1895 one of the first countries to establish a professional institute devoted to financial reporting. This has always played an important role, but, unlike elsewhere, it has never been solely responsible for the accounting standard-setting process. Instead, local accounting standards and practices have evolved out of an active exchange between three groups: auditors, companies and users of accounting information. Interestingly, this involvement of groups outside the profession in the standard-setting process is now beginning to be adopted in countries such as the USA and the UK, and also by bodies such as the IASC, but it has been an important influence shaping the Dutch environment for far longer.