비감사서비스 제공으로 인한 경제적 의존도가 내부회계관리제도 검토의견 및 취약점보고에 미친 영향

This study examines the relationship between the economic dependence from non audit services and auditor’s independence measured as the review opinion of internal control and the disclosure of internal control weaknesses. Most studies, which have been researched on the basis of audit report requiring auditor’s high level of assurance, have not provided evidences that the economic fee dependence of auditors on clients may impair auditor’s independence. On the one hand, as review engagement requires relatively low responsibility of auditors compared with external audit service although it requires the same level of materiality of misstatements, it is important to examine the possibility of impairment of auditor’s independence in performing review procedures on internal controls. Therefore, this study examines the relationship between the economic fee dependence of auditors on clients, and review opinion of internal control and disclosure of internal control weaknesses, considering that domestic rules related with internal control reporting prescribe review procedures requiring auditor’s moderate level of assurance. we perform logic and poisson regression by measuring economic fee dependence as non-audit fee from each client, the ratio of non-audit fee over total fee paid by each client and the ratio of total fee paid by each client over auditor’s total fee revenue, and by measuring auditor’s independence as the review opinion of internal control and the disclosure of material weakness. we additionally examine the relationships between economic fee dependence, and auditor’s review opinion of internal control and disclosure of material weakness using the samples confined to unqualified audit opinion on financial statements. The first result shows that economic fee dependence is not significantly related to qualified review opinion. On the other hand, the second result shows that economic fee dependence significantly affects the disclosure of material weakness of internal control system. The additional tests including only unqualified audit opinion samples also indicate similar results with prior tests. The contributions of this study are as follows. First, it tries to show empirical evidence under relatively lower legal risk environment for auditors compared with most previous studies. Second, the evidence about generous review reporting behavior caused by economic dependence may provide the important policy implication to regulators whether auditors’ review procedures may serve the appropriate roles of internal control aiming to enhance the financial reporting credibility.