Principais assuntos de auditoria: associação com o nível de discricionariedade dos accruals e o risco de litígio

Abstract

The audit report is considered a fundamental product delivered by independent auditors and in recent years it has undergone changes aimed at making it more informative to users of accounting information (MARQUES; PORTUGAL; ALMEIDA, 2019). With regard to these changes, in 2016, ISA 701 was issued, equivalent to NBC TA 701 in Brazil, which requires auditors to show in their report the critical points identified during the audit, called Main Matters of Auditing (PAAs). In this sense, this research aims to investigate the association between the reported PAAs and their informational content, the level of discretion of the accruals and the auditor's risk of litigation, in companies listed on B3 S.A. - Brazil. Handbag. Branch (B3) in the period from 2016 to 2019. To achieve the proposed objective, four econometric models were estimated, two to verify the association between the reported PAAs, their informational content and the level of discretion of the accruals (OLS) and the second model to investigate the association between the reported PAAs, their informational content and the Auditor's Litigation Risk (Logit). Through the results, it was not possible to verify a statistically significant association between the amount of disclosed PAAs and the level of discretion of the accruals, as well as between the informational content of the PAAs and the level of discretion of the accruals. As for the association between the amount of PAAs disclosed and the auditor's litigation risk, a negative and significant relationship was found, thus indicating that the disclosure of the PAA reduces the likelihood of future litigation for the auditor. With regard to the informational content of the PAAs, a negative and statistically significant association was found between the PAAs dealing with liabilities and risk at the account level and the likelihood of litigation risk. Based on the findings of this research, it is possible to infer that the greater the informative value of the PAAs, the greater their signaling capacity for the auditor's litigation risk, consequently, the greater the contribution to verifying the quality of accounting information and directing to users of accounting information and auditing firms regarding the likelihood that a company is included in a group most likely to face financial difficulties and mitigation of the auditor's risk of litigation