Proceedings

4.5. Separate evaluation of assets and liabilities
The accounting standard provides that individual assets and liabilities must be
valuated separately. This individual identification of assets and liabilities with a view
to their valuation must be done throughout the accounting valuation process. Here are
some of the advantages of a separate valuation of assets and liabilities:
� better determination of the unit values of the assets and liabilities components
when only the overall value of a set of various assets and liabilities is known;
� avoidance of offsetting between possible favorable and unfavorable
differences occurred on the valuation of different assets and liabilities.
Fiscally speaking, separate valuation may trigger effects, depending on which of the
two cases described above we are confronted with. Thus, if the company acquires a
set of assets (accompanied by possible liabilities) for a unique negotiated price, the
setting of the unit values of the assets and liabilities concerned is nothing but neutral.
For instance, some quickly depreciable components or some components that are
more quickly turned into expenditure in other manner might be assigned higher values
in order to accelerate the tax deduction process. If the valuation is done on inventory
and closing, the block valuation may lead to the failure to observe other accounting
principles, such as prudence, which, as already seen, brings about the asymmetric
treatment of the favorable and unfavorable value differences.
4.6. The opening balance sheet for each financial year must correspond
to the closing balance of the preceding financial year
The most important consequence of this principle is that fact that, once published, a
set of financial statements (balance sheet, profit and loss account, cash flow
statements…) can no longer be altered. The correction of the errors encountered in the
previous financial years or the changing of the accounting methods employed cannot
result into changes to the already published financial statements for those financial
years. The effects of these events are to be seen in the retained earnings of the
financial year affected by adjustment.
Fiscally speaking, the method change treatment was dwelled upon above. If it has
fiscal effects, accounting error correction will generate a possible corrective statement
where the tax is recalculated.
4.7. Individual recognition, without any off-setting
The accounting interdiction related to the offsetting between assets and liabilities, and
especially between revenue and expenditure, is a rule that has significant fiscal
implications. Accounting information would really be distorted if, for instance, a
taxable income were offset by a nondeductible expenditure item, or if a nontaxable
income were offset by a deductible expenditure item. Coming back to the case of
block assets acquisition, which are accompanied by liabilities, the possible offsetting
between an asset and a liability has effects on the tax values employed to records into
books the components of the purchased assembly.
The principle of non-offsetting proposed by the OMPF 3055/2009 brings something
new as compared to the previous standards, namely an accounting solution to assets
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