Nobes (1998), in his paper titled ‘Towards a General Model of the Reasons for
International Differences in Financial Reporting’, examines the usefulness of previously
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proposed general factors for explaining accounting differences and the logical relationship
between those factors. Briefly speaking, he argues that such factors as below are possibly
not the causes of major international accounting differences: first, tax (the primary reason
is because the dissimilarity that, in some countries, tax rules issued by governments are
inclined to dominate accounting systems including financial reporting rules for business
enterprises, and in some other countries, the financial reporting rules conventionally differ
from the tax rules (certainly that does not mean that there are no tax considerations in
accounting practices), could be thought of as a result of the (non-)existence of two sets of
rules rather than the major cause of international accounting differences, in other words,
even if there is no the tax variable, accounting differences can still exist); second, legal
systems (mainly because the legal variable, here specifically indicated as the regulatory
system for accounting, e.g. whom the accounting regulations should be formulated by, the
professional bodies or the authorities, is dependent on, but not independent off, the
financing factor, to take an instance, the importance of investors (specifically, for example,
if under the great power of investors, financial reporting rules would be created by
accounting profession to embody the requirements of investors for disclosure and
presentation, and be separated from tax rules controlled by government)); third,