Chính phủ so với thương mại kế toán Business accounting has often been used as a benchmark for evaluating government accounting. Two hundred years ago, Thomas Jefferson (quoted by Arthur Andersen, 1986) wished to see *the finance of the Union as clear and intelligible as a merchant's books, so that every member of Congress, and every man of any mind in the Union, should be able to comprehend them to investigate abuses, and consequently to control them'. Is it possible that government and business accounting are fundamentally alike in unimportant respects— as public and private management are (Allison, 1980)? What are the important respects that set government accounting apart from its business counterpart? In order to serve the three identified purposes, financial accounting and management accounting cannot be so neatly compartmentalized in the public sector, where management accounting refers to budgeting and control, rather than accounting solely in the service of managers. The budget is an expression of public policy and political preferences. It is an instrument of fiscal policy on revenue and spending to achieve macroeconomic objectives. It provides benchmarks for performance measured partly by the accounting system. Given their close relationship, it is often difficult to tell where budgeting ends and accounting begins. They reinforce each other in demonstrating and discharging fiscal accountability to the government's stakeholders, who are more numerous and diverse than the owners of a firm. Indeed, governments do not have owners. The absence of ownership in government makes it problematic to apply the accounting equation (assets = liabilities + owners' equity) and its corollary (profit = revenues-expenses) to the public sector. An exception may be local governments.
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