Acta academica karviniensia 2015, 15(3):89-98 | DOI: 10.25142/aak.2015.034

FINAL ACCOUNT - LATENT DATA OF THE MUNICIPAL ECONOMY

Iris Šimíková

Slezská univerzita, Obchodně podnikatelská fakulta, Univerzitní nám. 1934/3, 733 40 Karviná, Email:simikova@opf.slu.cz

Final account is a particularity of local government. All municipalities are obliged to compile it. The purpose of a final account is to summarize the yearly economic activity of a municipality. The aim of the article is to analyse the accessibility of final accounts to citizens based on a performed research. A municipality is the primary community of citizens. The law defines a municipality as an accounting entity obliged to keep books. Unlike companies, which compile annual report, a municipality compiles a final account. According to applicable legislation, a municipality is not obliged to make its final account public. The analysis of accessibility of final accounts has been performed within a selected district of the Moravian-Silesian Region comprising of seventy-two municipalities. The result is a finding that a vast majority of municipalities take advantage of the loophole in the law and forbid citizens from accesing the information on the economic activity of the municipality. The solution seems to be to amend the relevant legislation with the obligation to make the final account public, analogically to the obligation for companies to make their annual report public.

Keywords: annual report, final account, financial statements, local government, municipality

JEL classification: H83, I38, M41, M48

Received: October 9, 2015; Accepted: December 15, 2015; Published: September 30, 2015  Show citation