湖南省2021年ACCA考试报名时间

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(ii) The income tax implications of the proposed financing arrangements
Mr Fencer has borrowed money from a UK bank in order to make a loan to Rapier Ltd, a close company. The interest
paid by Mr Fencer to the bank will be an allowable charge on income as long as he continues to hold more than 5% of
Rapier Ltd. Charges on income are deductible in arriving at an individual’s statutory total income.
Mr Fencer will receive interest from Rapier Ltd net of 20% income tax. The gross amount of interest will be subject to
income tax at either 10%, 20% or 40% depending on whether the income falls into Mr Fencer’s starting rate, basic rate
or higher rate tax band. Mr Fencer will obtain a tax credit for the 20% income tax suffered at source.

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4 Becker & Co
(a) Joint business arrangement
The business opportunity in respect of Murray Co could be lucrative if the market research is to be believed.
However, IFAC’s Code of Ethics for Professional Accountants states that a mutual business arrangement is likely to give rise
to self-interest and intimidation threats to independence and objectivity. The audit firm must be and be seen to be independent
of the audit client, which clearly cannot be the case if the audit firm and the client are seen to be working together for a
mutual financial gain.
In the scenario, two options are available. Firstly, Becker & Co could provide the audit client with finance to complete the
development and take the product to market. There is a general prohibition on audit firms providing finance to their audit
clients. This would create a clear financial self-interest threat as the audit firm would be receiving a return on investment from
their client. The Code states that if a firm makes a loan (or guarantees a loan) to a client, the self-interest threat created would
be so significant that no safeguard could reduce the threat to an acceptable level.
The provision of finance using convertible debentures raises a further ethical problem, because if the debentures are ultimately
converted to equity, the audit firm would then hold equity shares in their audit client. This is a severe financial self-interest,
which safeguards are unlikely to be able to reduce to an acceptable level.
The finance should not be advanced to Murray Co while the company remains an audit client of Becker & Co.
The second option is for a joint venture company to be established. This would be perceived as a significant mutual business
interest as Becker & Co and Murray Co would be investing together, sharing control and sharing a return on investment in
the form. of dividends. IFAC’s Code of Ethics states that unless the relationship between the two parties is clearly insignificant,
the financial interest is immaterial, and the audit firm is unable to exercise significant influence, then no safeguards could
reduce the threat to an acceptable level. In this case Becker & Co may not enter into the joint venture arrangement while
Murray Co is still an audit client.
The audit practice may consider that investing in the new electronic product is a commercial strategy that it wishes to pursue,
either through loan finance or using a joint venture arrangement. In this case the firm should resign as auditor with immediate
effect in order to eliminate any ethical problem with the business arrangement. The partners should carefully consider if the
potential return on investment will more than compensate for the lost audit fee from Murray Co.
The partners should also reflect on whether they want to diversify to such an extent – this investment is unlikely to be in an
area where any of the audit partners have much knowledge or expertise. A thorough commercial evaluation and business risk
analysis must be performed on the new product to ensure that it is a sound business decision for the firm to invest.
The audit partners should also consider how much time they would need to spend on this business development, if they
decided to resign as auditors and to go ahead with the investment. Such a new and important project could mean that they
take their focus off the key business i.e. the audit practice. They should consider if it would be better to spend their time trying
to compete effectively with the two new firms of accountants, trying to retain key clients, and to attract new accounting and
audit clients rather than diversify into something completely different.

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5 (a) IFRSs were not designed specifically for listed companies. However, in many countries the main users of IFRS are listed
companies. Currently SMEs who adopt IFRS have to follow all the requirements and not all SMEs take exception to applying
IFRS because it gives their financial statements enhanced reliability, relevance and credibility, and results in fair presentation.
However, other SMEs will wish to comply with IFRS for consistency and comparability purposes within their own country and
internationally but wish to apply simplified or different standards relevant to SMEs on the grounds that some IFRS are
unnecessarily demanding and some of the information produced is not used by users of SME financial statements.
The objectives of general purpose financial statements are basically appropriate for SMEs and publicly listed companies alike.
Therefore there is an argument that there is a need for only one set of IFRS which could be used nationally and internationally.
However, some SMEs require different financial information than listed companies. For example expanded related party
disclosures may be useful as SMEs often raise capital from shareholders, directors and suppliers. Additionally directors often
offer personal assets as security for bank finance.
The cost burden of applying the full set of IFRS may not be justified on the basis of user needs. The purpose and usage of
the financial statements, and the nature of the accounting expertise available to the SME, will not be the same as for listed
companies. These circumstances themselves may provide justification for a separate set of IFRSs for SMEs. A problem which
might arise is that users become familiar with IFRS as opposed to local GAAP thus creating a two tier system which could
lead to local GAAP being seen as an inferior or even a superior set of accounting rules.
One course of action would be for GAAP for SMEs to be developed on a national basis with IFRS being focused on accounting
for listed company activities. The main issue here would be that the practices developed for SMEs may not be consistent and
may lack comparability across national boundaries. This may mean that where SMEs wish to list their shares on a capital
market, the transition to IFRSs may be difficult. It seems that national standards setters are strongly supportive of thedevelopment of IFRSs for SMEs.

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