Financial Reporting of Cultural, Heritage, Scientific and Community Collections

Abstract

An article by Carnegie and Wolnizer in Australian Accounting Review argued that “it is not technically proper to recognise cultural, heritage and scientific collections as assets for financial reporting purposes”. The reasons included the following: cultural, heritage, scientific and community collections do not satisfy the definition of and recognition criteria for assets; there is no demand for such information by users of general‐purpose financial reports; the cost of preparing the information would outweigh the benefits; and recognition of these collections is not in accordance with generally accepted accounting practice. This article analyses these arguments and generally does not find support for them.