During the last twenty‐five years, the changes in Spanish accounting have been radical and significant, especially since 1986 when Spain joined the European Union. Those changes were first introduced in business accounting, following the patterns of the Fourth Directive, but governmental accounting has also been affected by structural reforms that have modified the financial reporting system, the accounting standards and the accounting principles to be applied. However, the governmental accounting system needs further improvement, particularly given the EMU framework and the relationship between governmental accounting and national accounting.
During the first half of the nineties, many accounting innovations and reforms have been introduced in Spanish governmental accounting. In this context, the purposes of this paper are, on the one hand, to present the main features of local financial reporting legal requirements, which are very close to the central state accounting regulations, as well as real accountability and quality of reported information. On the other hand, this paper looks for an analysis of the main differences and similarities of accounting regulation among Spanish regional governments, identifying practices and users' expectations, as the result of a survey developed by the authors.. Also presented are some proposals concerned with a possible harmonised accounting and reporting common framework, in order to maintain the traditional homogeneity that has characterised the past governmental accounting system in Spain.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.