Resumen de Local government financial reporting in the USA and Spain: A comparative study

Lourdes Torres Pradas, Vicente Pina Martínez

• The aims of this paper are to carry out a comparison of the degree of coincidence between the governmental accounting practices in accrual accounting recommended by the IPSAS of IFAC and the information required by the GASB Statement 34 and Spanish local government accounting, and to study the relationship between the general objectives of governmental accounting and the disclosure of information in the financial report of the local governments of the USA, Spain and the IPSAS of the IFAC.

  The IFAC proposal represents the clearest international bet on the implementation of GAAP in the public sector as a way of improving the quality of governmental financial reports. The USA and Spain represent two different accounting contexts, the Anglo-American and the European Continental. The similarities between the three systems show that the IFAC proposal could be assumed both by professional bodies such as the GASB and by governmental bodies such as the Spanish government.