Editorial

ID: 34286

Authors: Fábio Frezatti.

Source: Revista Contabilidade & Finanças, v. 25, n. especial, p. 298-298, December, 2014. 1 page(s).

Document type: Editorial (Portuguese)

A Evolução do IASC para o IASB e os Desafios Enfrentados

ID: 34287

Authors: Stephen A. Zeff, Rice University.

Source: Revista Contabilidade & Finanças, v. 25, n. especial, p. 300-320, December, 2014. 21 page(s).

Keyword: IAS , IASB , IASC , IFRS , Normalização , Regulamentação

Document type: Article (Portuguese)

The Double-entry Bookkeeping Committee of 1914 and the Brazilian Public Accounting System

ID: 34288

Authors: Tiago Villac Adde, Sérgio de Iudícibus, Álvaro Augusto Ricardino Filho, Eliseu Martins.

Source: Revista Contabilidade & Finanças, v. 25, n. especial, p. 321-333, December, 2014. 13 page(s).

Keyword: Double-entry bookkeeping , Double-entry Bookkeeping Committee , Public accounting

Document type: Article (Portuguese) Show Abstract

The history of Brazilian accounting has not been explored at length. Through a historical survey, this article presents the history of the Doubleentry Bookkeeping Committee of 1914. After the Proclamation of the Republic was announced in 1889, the government started to expand its administrative bodies, necessitating the introduction of a bureaucracy able to perform new functions. In the same period, Brazil experienced a strong economic development with the development of its coffee industry. In 1905, under the leadership of Carlos de Carvalho, São Paulo State Treasury bookkeeping tasks were introduced under a double-entry bookkeeping system and through accrual and financial accounting. Doubleentry bookkeeping practices in the federal public accounting system, although enshrined in law since 1808, were only fully realized after the creation of the Double-entry Bookkeeping Committee in 1914. In that same year, due to the negotiation of a second funding loan, English creditor bank auditors requested a balance of the National Treasury from the Minister of Finance Rivadávia Corrêa. Because the balance had not been prepared in eight years, the Double-entry Bookkeeping Committee was established in June of 1914, and this body completed a technical audit of Revenues and Expenditures. The committee also conducted the state administration’s first Asset and Liability audit since the colonial era. The Double-entry Bookkeeping Committee of 1914 spearheaded changes to the Brazilian public accounting system, including the creation of the Public Accounting Code in 1922 and the approval of Central Accounting Office of the Republic regulation in 1924, strengthening and ascribing perpetuity to practices adopted after 1914.

Monetary Correction: a Timeline about the Tool Use, from 1944 to 1995

ID: 34289

Authors: Ariovaldo dos Santos, Suzana Lopes Salgado Ribeiro.

Source: Revista Contabilidade & Finanças, v. 25, n. especial, p. 334-345, December, 2014. 12 page(s).

Keyword: Economic history , Indexation , Inflation , Monetary Correction , Timeline

Document type: Article (Portuguese) Show Abstract

This article works with the history of how the tool inflation adjustment of annual reports was arranged over half a century until its extinction. To do this, we related the social contexts, the legislation, and the academic perception corresponding to its best implementation in the financial system of Brazil. This study introduces a chronology of using this tool since the 1940s, when a sporadic revaluation of assets began, until the 1990s, when the signs of fatigue and the very extinction of inflation adjustment became apparent in Brazil. The importance of this historical contextualization relies on the possibility of understanding the history of inflation adjustment related to recent events in the country’s history, marked over these 50 years by troubled times in national politics, permeated with strong instabilities. The Brazilian economy has faced, in its recent history, long periods of high inflation rates. Several measures and plans were needed to reduce inflation rates and seek economic stability. Even so, it was observed that, in the first moments when the country experienced a less severe inflation process, compared to some later ones, there was support from a regulatory legislation and concern to measure and mitigate the impacts of devaluation of the currency’s purchasing power on the assets of companies. Thus, we also point out the limits imposed by the prohibition to use this tool to deal with the lack of accuracy of annual reports prepared by companies since 1996.

Slavery Service Accounting Practices in Brazil: A Bibliographic and Document Analysis

ID: 34290

Authors: Adriana Rodrigues Silva.

Source: Revista Contabilidade & Finanças, v. 25, n. especial, p. 346-354, December, 2014. 9 page(s).

Keyword: Accounting , Dehumanization , Slaves

Document type: Article (Portuguese) Show Abstract

This study focuses on the social and economic aspects and institutional relationships that determined a unique pattern of inequality. We aim to examine the particular role of accounting as a practice used to dehumanize an entire class of people. The primary purpose of this study is not to examine slavery’s profitability but rather to identify how accounting practices served slavery. A qualitative research method is applied in this study. Regarding technical procedures, this study makes use of bibliographic and documentary sources. For the purpose of this investigation, and in accordance with bibliographic and documentary research methods, we analyze scientific articles, books and documents from the Brazilian National Archive, the Brazilian Historic and Geographic Institute and the Brazilian National Library Foundation. In light of what was discovered through the study’s development, we can consider accounting as a tool that is more active than passive and, therefore, as a tool that was used to support the slave regime. In essence, accounting was used to convert a human’s qualitative attributes into a limited number of categories (age, gender, race), through which slaves were differentiated and monetized to facilitate commercial trafficking. We believe that accounting practices facilitated slave trading, conversion and exploitation, procedures that completely ignored qualitative and human dimensions of slavery. Opportunities for future studies on accounting in the slave period, as is the case of other oppressive regimes, are infinite, especially in the case of Brazil.

Alice in Accounting Land: The Adventure of Two Economic Historians in Accounting Records of the 19th Century

ID: 34291

Authors: Luciana Suarez Lopes, Anne Gerard Hanley.

Source: Revista Contabilidade & Finanças, v. 25, n. especial, p. 355-363, December, 2014. 9 page(s).

Keyword: Balance sheet , Budget , Municipality , Public finance

Document type: Article (Portuguese) Show Abstract

This article aims to share our experience of working with São Paulo’s municipal budgets published during the 19th century and discuss the difficulties of using this kind of source to analyze the municipal public finance from a historical perspective. The budget laws published draw the researcher’s attention because they are abundant and relatively easy to work with, providing a huge documentary set that may be used as a means for studies in the fields of economic history, political history, and cultural history within the imperial period. These laws are printed, therefore, readable, and easily accessible through the digital web portal Acervo Histórico da Assembleia Legislativa do Estado de São Paulo [Historical Collection of the São Paulo State Legislative Assembly]. They detail the origins and destinations of public resources, municipality by municipality, allowing the researcher to reconstruct the financial life of municipalities, identifying changes in time and space of the fortunes of the 19th-century São Paulo state communities. However, may we really trust these budgets? Conversations and collaborations between two researchers showed that these accessible, readable, and abundant sources are not as appropriate as they seem at first glance. This article reports our troubled and even contradictory journey into the world of municipal public accounting, in order to detail our findings and provide a warning on these sources. A comparative methodology between budget laws and handwritten balance sheets was used at time intervals of 1, 2, and 3 years, in search of correlations and adjustment patterns between budgeted and spent amounts of money. Our experience has shown that budget laws do not have much in common with the actual financial experience of municipalities within the imperial period, therefore, they are not the most appropriate sources to know the financial daily life in the 19th-century São Paulo state villages.