Evaluation of Accountability of Accounting and Financial Reporting System in Islamic Republic of Iran

In a democratic society, Power ultimately rests in the hands of the citizen ry. The citizens delegate that power to public officials through the election process.In such society accountability requires government to answer the citizenry - to justify the raising of public resources and the purposes of which they are used.Govern mental accountability is based on the belief that the citizenry has a " right to know", a right to receive only declared facts that may lead to public debate by the citizens and their elected representatives. Accounting and financial reporting plays a major role in fulfilling government's duty to be publicly accountable in the democratic society (GASB, 1993). The main purpose of this research is assessing accountability of governmental accounting and financial reporting system of Islamic Republic of Iran. In accordance to that purpose this research 1s divided to three stages as described below:Review and study governmental accounting and financial reporting conceptual framework and principles in order to determine key elements which affect the level of governmental accounting and financial reporting’s accountability Obtaining the opinion of accounting and auditing experts and university lecturers about key elements of accounting and financial reporting system in order to obtain general agreement of those experts by Delphi survey technique. Comparing characteristics of Islamic Republic government financial reporting system, with those selected criterion in order to assess accountability of Iran financial reporting system. The results of those three stages of research, shows that Iran 's Islamic Republic government reporting system has major deficiencies in fulfilling government accountability in the field of budgetary control, recognition of actual revenues and expenditures, general long term debts, capital asset, financial position and results of operations on the comprehensive annual financial report. Finally, researcher has made some recommendation in order to improve major deficiencies of governmental accounting and reporting system.