재무제표 주석 유용성의 실태조사와 개선방안

The notes to the financial statements should be prepared to provide useful information in an understandable manner to users together with the body of financial statements, but some problems are observed such that the notes do not convey relevant information sufficiently; the notes do contain irrelevant information unnecessarily; and the notes do not communicate information effectively to users. Although the notes are supplementary to the body of financial statements, in current practice the notes contain an excessive amount of information much more than the body of financial statements, raising the problem of ‘information overload’ which impedes the effective communication of information. This study attempts to evaluate how well the actual notes of Korean firms provide useful information in an understandable manner, and then to make suggestions on how to improve the preparation of the notes. For this, we examine the actual note disclosures of Korean firms in detail, compare them with those of American firms following US GAAP and European firms applying IFRS, and then analyze the perceptions of domestic preparers, auditors, and major users (financial analysts, bank loan officers and credit rating agency officers) of financial statements about the usefulness of the notes through in-depth interviews.