ABSTRACT:
The annual accounts of 2016 represent a significant point of discontinuity in the process of preparing Italian financial statements. Legislative Decree No. 139 of August 18, 2015, which aims to implement Directive 2013/34/EU, is the most important and the fastest update of Italian accounting rules since the adoption, pursuant to Legislative Decree No. 127 of April 9, 1991, of the repealed IV and VII EEC Directives. The changes made to the Italian Civil Code, accompanied by a re- elaboration of the Italian GAAP, introduced new general financial reporting principles, changed the structure of financial statements, innovated the measurement bases and diversified the disclosure in the notes. An important change in the financial reporting model, influenced by IFRS, with potentials and significant effects – also thanks to a general retroactive application – both in relation to measuring a company’s performance in terms of income and capital, and in relation to the information level in the notes. This study represents the first contribution to the discussion on the actual impact of Legislative Decree No. 139/2015 and the new Italian GAAP on preparers’ behaviour and the values reported in their financial statements. For this purpose, we investigate a sample of 1,497 full accounts referring to fiscal periods ending on 31 December 2016 and subject to the new accounting rules, elaborated by innovative software technologies that can process them from the native XBRL format. The results show that first-time adoption had significant impacts: 15% of the companies examined restated comparative values. These companies were also characterised by an average reduction in shareholders’ equity of about 4.5%.
KEYWORDS: Legislative Decree No. 139/2015; First time adoption; New Italian GAAP
