To Examine Audit and Non-audit Fees Disclosed in the Annual Reports by Company and Industry

Abstract

EachThis research aims to examine audit and non-audit fees disclosed in the annual reports by company and industry. Research questions are how audit and non-audit fees disclosed in German financial service companies? What are compositions of NAS fees in researched companies from 5 industries in 2015? What are trends of audit and non-audit fees in researched companies? And what are reasons behind trends? According to these questions, relative explanations and theories will be represented. The final research question is that are current regulations issued by the SEC, the PCAOB and the EC effective to eliminate adverse impacts of NAS? This research firstly examines how audit and non-audit fees disclosed in annual reports by company and industry, through investigating audit and non-audit fees in German financial companies and compositions of NAS fees in 61 companies from 5 industries in 2015, then observing trends of audit and non-audit fees in researched companies and exploring reasons behind trends. Finally trying to evaluate the effectiveness of regulations research issued by the SEC, the PCAOB and the EC. With regard to purposes to address these questions, since the topic of this research is about NAS, which cannot be comprehensively surveyed without the consideration of audit services, and they need to be compared with each other in the research process to arouse conclusions. Thus audit and non-audit fees are employed as the measurement of audit services and NAS provided by accountancy firms. Another important theme of this research is auditing regulations, as the final objective is to prove the justification of NAS, the effectiveness of legislations and regulations is evaluated, helping to get the conclusion.