The Obstacles of International Accounting Standards Adoption in Iran

International Financial Reporting standards (IFRS) are more and more being accepted all over the world. International organizations like the UN, EU and OECD for assessment of projects and lending, foreign stock exchanges for listing and foreign investors for analyzing and comparing companies’ financial statements all over the world require common standards and IFRS can meet the requirement. Despite all advantages of adopting IFRS, there are obstacles for such harmonization; like that, economic, political and institutional factors in every country. In this survey, twelve identified obstacles in the previous research were examined and the questionnaire was provided for two groups of professionals and academics. The results showed ten factors as obstacles in Iran. The obstacles, according to the importance, are not academic teaching of IFRS; lack of effective participation in world professional societies and financial markets; no developed stock market as an international exchange and limitation of foreign investments; national tax system; few international trades specially in financing; concerning about misunderstandings of changes by stakeholders; lack of developed economic infrastructure like organized and developed markets in the country; differences in business environments, capital structure and ownership structure; little familiarity of accountants, users of financial statements and auditors with IFRS and finally influence of some big corporations and banks. Also two remaining factors, which are high costs of coordination and transmission into international accounting standards and cultural structure and attributes, were not significant.