Russian Accounting Standards (RAS; ), also called Russian Accounting Principles (RAP) or Russian GAAP or GAAP (Russia), refer to the body of regulatory documents concerning financial accounting and reporting standards in the

Russian Federation Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

. For historical reasons, the Russian Accounting Standards framework has been determined by the state, rather by professional bodies. The primary users of RAS are state and tax authorities, rather than management or third parties. RAS financial statements must include

balance sheet In financial accounting, a balance sheet (also known as statement of financial position or statement of financial condition) is a summary of the financial balances of an individual or organization, whether it be a sole proprietorship, a business ...

income statement An income statement or profit and loss accountProfessional English in Use - Finance, Cambridge University Press, p. 10 (also referred to as a ''profit and loss statement'' (P&L), ''statement of profit or loss'', ''revenue statement'', ''statement o ...

statement of changes in equity A statement of changes in equity is one of the four basic financial statements. It is also known as the statement of changes in owner's equity for a sole trader, statement of changes in partners' equity for a partnership, statement of changes in ...

cash flow statement In financial accounting, a cash flow statement, also known as ''statement of cash flows'', is a financial statement that shows how changes in balance sheet accounts and income affect cash and cash equivalents, and breaks the analysis down to oper ...

and explanatory notes. Under RAS, a specific layout is mandatory for the balance sheet and other statements. The Russian government has been striving to harmonize Russian Accounting Standards with IFRS since 1998. The Law No. 208-FZ introduced IFRS into Russian legislation in 2010. Since 2012,

IFRS International Financial Reporting Standards, commonly called IFRS, are accounting standards issued by the IFRS Foundation and the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). They constitute a standardised way of describing the company's fina ...

have increasingly been adopted in Russia, and they are mandatory for consolidated financial statements, while standalone financial statements must be prepared using RAS. IFRS statements are also required for domestic

public companies A public company is a company whose ownership is organized via shares of stock which are intended to be freely traded on a stock exchange or in over-the-counter markets. A public (publicly traded) company can be listed on a stock exchange ( ...

. IFRS are generally deemed more relevant to the needs of investors.

Comparison to IFRS

Major reasons for deviation between Russian GAAP and IFRS / US-GAAP (e.g. when the Russian affiliate of a larger group need to be consolidated to the mother company) are the following: # Booking of payables in the

general ledger In bookkeeping, a general ledger is a bookkeeping ledger in which accounting data are posted from General journal, journals and aggregated from subledgers, such as accounts payable, accounts receivable, cash management, fixed assets, purchasing ...

according to national accounting standards can only be made upon receipt of the actual acceptance protocol (good's receipt). Indeed, in Russia, in contrast to IFRS and US-GAAP, the invoice (outgoing or incoming) is not an official tax or accounting document and does not trigger any booking. There is also no provision to book in the General Ledger any expense for goods and services that according to a contract are effectively received but for whom documents are still not exchanged. # There is no possibility under Russian GAAP to recognise the good-will as an intangible asset in the balance sheet of a company. This has a major consequence when a company is sold. Indeed, if a company (or part of it) is sold at a higher value than its book value (i.e. to account for the good-will value), the selling party need to pay tax at the relevant profit tax rate (20% in 2013) on the difference in value between selling and accounting value and the buyer has no possibility to amortize the cost and deduct it from present and future revenues. # There is no equivalent of

IAS 37 International Accounting Standard 37: Provisions, Contingent Liabilities and Contingent Assets, or IAS 37, is an international financial reporting standard adopted by the International Accounting Standards Board (IASB). It sets out the accounting ...

in the Russian GAAP. Loans and monetary securities are not discounted, so the present value of such financial assets is not discounted for the relevant interest rates at the different maturities of the loans.

References

External links

Provisions of Finance from the Russian Ministry of Finance
Accounting principles by country Standards of Russia Russian business law {{business-stub