Form and Substance and Their Gap in Accounting

Financial statements cannot report all the information content. The main reason is the judgment in standards and qualitative financial reporting concepts، and conflict of interests between various groups. The form and substance are such concepts. The question of this research is the measure of the gap، preference، conflict or agreement of five groups of producers، users، confirmers، teachers and accounting students about this issue. Recognizing factors causing the gap is the goal of this research. This study is segmental cross-sectional and quantitative. Data gathering is done using questionnaire. Analysis of variance (ANOVA)، F-test and t-test are also used. The results have shown that the state and order of studied groups and their common and characteristic properties have some effects on their ideas about form and content and the gap between them. Therefore considering the result of this research and the noticeable gap and this reality that editing and using accounting standards could have an important role on decreasing the gap، some proposals are presented for decreasing the descripted gap.