Notes

Ethical issues relating to financial reports
All business people have an eithical and legal obligation to ensure financial records and accounts are accurate. Any temptation to engage in creative accounting to portray a more favourable yet inaccurate, finacial picture of the business should always be avoided.
policies to minismise unethical behaviour
Audits: is an independant check of accurate finacial and accounting producures.
There are 3 types of audits:
internal: conducted by employees in the business
management: conducted to review the business's strategic plan
external: conducted by independant and specialised audit accountants. These are required to be completed by the commonwealth corporations act 2001
Record keeping: All records must be kept for transactions incl cash transactions otherwise the business could be guilty of tax fraud
Accurate record keeping is necessary for taxation purposes as well as for other stakeholders
GST obligations:
All business must complete a BAS (business activity statement) every 3 months which reflects the sum of transactions made with customers.
Failure to declare all GST or claiming inputs credits to which they are not entitled is both uneithical and illegal.
Reporting procedures:
Businesses provide the government (ATO) and shareholders with any accurate financial reports as well as making them avaliable to other stakeholders.
Inaccurate or dishonest reporting is both uneithical and illegal