First, from the perspective of accounting development history
As the basis of modern accounting, double-entry bookkeeping was born in medieval Italy. At that time, due to the convenience of geographical conditions, coastal cities such as Genoa and Venice became commercial centers. Commercial activities at that time were mainly composed of short-term speculative trade in the Near East. Due to the social and economic conditions at that time, these overseas short-term speculative transactions were characterized by high returns and high risks. Therefore, in order to obtain high returns and reduce risks, the main body of activities is mainly established in the form of partnership investment. As an investor, the investment partner entrusts the goods to the executive partner, who risks sailing for actual trade and then makes a detailed report when he comes back to share the profits. Due to the limitation of business activities, every partner will benefit after an adventure is completed. If there is no suitable investment opportunity, the partnership will be dissolved immediately. It can be seen that at that time, the conditions for continuous operation of enterprises were not available, but phased accounting had emerged. The staging here is not artificial staging, but the accounting period of each overseas speculative activity, which can be less than one year or more, depending on the duration of speculative trading activities.
Another example is the East India Company, which was established under the franchise of Elizabeth I in 1600. It began to take risks at sea by issuing limited shares, and gradually developed into a going concern company with permanent investment capital. During the period of 1600- 16 17, the company undertook 1 13 maritime trade activities. At the end of each voyage, assets and profits are liquidated so as to be "distributed" among shareholders, and at the same time, subscribed capital is supplemented in a new way, that is, those who want to quit can quit and new "adventurers" can join. At this time, due to the non-permanence of capital and the discontinuity of business activities, going concern does not exist, and the use of accounting period (taking each sailing activity as the accounting period) has been determined.
With the development of social economy, overseas trade has developed into a continuous process. According to each maritime speculative trade activity, it is very troublesome to carry long-term assets such as ships and trading stations from one adventure to the next, which is easy to confuse the company's accounts. Secondly, the continuous maritime trade also requires the company to have permanent capital (at this time, it is more appropriate to regard the enterprise as a going concern, that is, the permanent capital ensures the continuity of enterprise operation). 16 13, the East India Company stopped issuing every risky stock and began to sell four-year warrants. 1657 promulgated the articles of association for the establishment of the new company, established the principle of permanent capital contribution, and expanded the rights of shareholders to transfer individual shares before liquidation. Due to the introduction of permanent capital, two problems have arisen: first, investors (shareholders) hope that their invested capital can be preserved, and joint-stock companies must ensure the integrity of their capital, the continuity of their operations and their economic strength, so that investors, consumers, company employees and other relevant personnel can avoid economic losses due to the reduction of assets and profitability. Second, shareholder distribution is no longer a familiar way to distribute assets and profits, but will be carried out by paying "dividends" on a regular basis. These two problems lead to further requirements for accounting: on the one hand, it is necessary to analyze and evaluate capital assets accurately on a regular basis to ensure the maintenance of capital; At the same time, it is necessary to clearly distinguish between assets and expenses, and the income of the enterprise should be linked to the cost of generating income in a certain period, that is, the profit should be determined by stages through the principle of matching the period to ensure regular dividends from the current income and accumulated income. Since then, regular asset evaluation and profit accounting have become the main work of accountants, which has produced more realistic accounting practice.
Therefore, accounting staging is not produced because of the continuous operation of the enterprise, but to divide the continuous operation activities into continuous periods of equal length, so as to facilitate the preparation of staged accounting reports. Staged accounting is not a technical arrangement subordinate to going concern. Accounting staging has existed for a long time, which is due to the introduction of permanent capital, making it possible for enterprises to continue to operate, and the requirements of capital maintenance and regular dividends lead to the shortening and regularization of accounting staging. Second, from the current accounting environment.
From the essence of accounting assumptions, as American accountant hendrickson pointed out in Accounting Theory, "Assumptions refer to those basic assumptions, that is, various basic suggestions on the economic and political environment related to accounting." It can be seen that accounting assumptions are closely related to the social environment on which they depend. Once the environment changes, these assumptions no longer hold water. In the period of industrial economy, there are relatively stable and independent accounting subjects, and the business risks of enterprises are low, and the requirements for information timeliness are not high. In this environment, the four assumptions of accounting subject, monetary measurement, going concern and accounting staging are undoubtedly very important and necessary.
However, today, with the rapid development of scientific innovation and economic technology, the society has entered the information technology era, the competition among accounting entities is becoming increasingly fierce, the risks in the business environment are increasing, commodity prices and interest rates are undergoing tremendous changes, the rapid development of science and technology makes products and equipment rapidly obsolete, market share or marginal profits will suddenly be lost, the product life cycle will be greatly shortened, and the emergence of a large number of financial innovations and derivatives makes the financial market more unpredictable. As a result, companies with good book operations immediately went bankrupt. For example,1On February 27th, 995, the British Bahrain Brothers Company broke out because it operated the Nikkei 225 stock index futures, and the Bahrain Bank with a history of one hundred years declared bankruptcy. 1In September 1995, new york Branch of Daiwa Bank suffered a loss of 1 1 billion dollars due to the use of financial instruments. 1June, 1996, Sumitomo Corporation of Japan suffered a loss of1800 million US dollars because it operated copper futures. These are too numerous to mention. It is a direct challenge to the premise of sustainable operation-that is, the enterprise will continue to operate in the foreseeable future and will not be liquidated and terminated. In any case, asset capital should be priced regularly, income and profit should be accounted regularly to ensure capital maintenance and dividend distribution, and operators and external stakeholders also need to know the information of the enterprise in time, so the accounting stage must still exist. The incidental assumption that installment accounting depends on going concern is obviously untenable in this case.
On the other hand, with the rapid development of computer technology, network communication technology and multimedia technology, a new online enterprise organization form-virtual enterprise came into being. 1In March 1994, Mitchell and Bell (USA) published an article entitled "Visual Firmness", which caused great repercussions in academia and industry. In their view, "virtual enterprise is actually a form of cooperative organization formed by many enterprises in order to provide goods or services to the market." These individual enterprises have excellent technology in their respective professional fields. Using modern information and communication technology to weave them into a network can provide goods and services to the market more effectively and conduct trading activities, thus completing market functions that ordinary enterprises cannot undertake. In other words, virtual enterprise is a dynamic "temporary organization" to meet the needs of specific business. Market opportunities are the prerequisite for the establishment of virtual enterprises (mostly based on the cooperation of specific projects, services or products). Virtual enterprises appear with opportunities and collapse with their demise. The Boeing 777, a new wide-body passenger plane exhibited at 1994, is an example. The passenger plane was jointly completed by 34 working groups of major companies such as the United States, Britain, France, Japan and Canada. The whole process is completely on the network. Through the full exchange of online information and the application of computer simulation technology, the degree of cooperation between parts is very accurate, and there is no rework in assembly. For this kind of virtual enterprise, many accounting treatment methods based on going concern assumption are obviously no longer applicable, because it deviates from the basic premise of going concern assumption. After the end of the cooperation project, the enterprise will be dissolved by itself, and the accounting entity based on the Internet will no longer apply the assumption of going concern.
If you still think that phased accounting is a supplement to going concern, it is a contingent assumption. In the case of virtual enterprises, because the assumption of going concern is not applicable, accounting staging does not exist. And this inference is obviously not valid. In fact, from the point of view of accounting staging, this kind of virtual enterprise, just like a maritime speculative trade activity in the Middle Ages mentioned above, can completely take the target activity of this virtual enterprise as the accounting period to account for the investment application of capital assets and the distribution of income, thus providing necessary information for various investment cooperation groups, that is, the accounting staging hypothesis is still applicable.
Three. Conclusion: The assumption of going concern should be included in the accounting staging assumption.
From the above analysis, it can be seen that the accounting staging hypothesis is a highly independent hypothesis, both in terms of the history of accounting development and the present situation of accounting environment. It is not subordinate to the going concern assumption, and from another perspective, it can even completely replace the going concern assumption. Therefore, the author tries to make bold improvements and incorporate the going concern assumption into the accounting staging assumption to make the whole accounting assumption more concise and clear. The reason for this is the following：
On the one hand, incorporating the going concern assumption into the accounting staging assumption will not affect the previous accounting treatment methods. Based on the assumption of going concern, the accounting entity uses historical cost instead of liquidation cost to confirm and measure various asset elements, all assets will be consumed and sold in the normal production and operation process according to the predetermined target, and the debts it undertakes will be repaid as scheduled, so the financial statements provided by the enterprise will be regarded as part of a series of continuous reports. In fact, based on the assumption of accounting period, the above accounting treatment method is also acceptable and a realistic choice. The accounting period includes not only the meaning of "current period", but also the meaning of "next period and subsequent periods". Persuasively, the assets amortized under the assumption of going concern in the past are actually based on the accounting period. For example, the depreciation period of fixed assets is 15 years, which is not based on the continuous operation of the enterprise 15 years, but on the latest accounting period 15 years.
On the other hand, from a historical point of view, accounting staging is earlier than the assumption of going concern, and the emergence of going concern only leads to the shortening and standardization of accounting staging. For example, the emergence of virtual enterprises makes going concern no longer exist, but the regression application of accounting stages is still feasible; Moreover, in the information technology era, enterprises are facing more and more fierce competition and greater risks, which may be liquidated and terminated at any time, so it is necessary and wise to pay attention to each accounting period. Therefore, if most accounting periods are developed according to the established objectives, it can be considered that going concern is reasonable; If the performance of most accounting periods is not good, it will be difficult to establish the sustainable operation of the enterprise. Instead of deriving the accounting period from the uncertain going concern, it is better to derive the going concern from the determinable accounting period.