Roman Kenigsberg Participates in Conference Organised by Association of Auditors

Roman Kenigsberg, the Head of Internal Audit and Risk Management Services at FBK, has participated in a conference organised by the Self-Regulatory Organization of Auditors Association “Sodruzhestvo” and titled “Audit, Accounting and Financial Control amid Transformational Processes in the Russian Economy: New Approaches, Relevant Issues, Solutions”. He moderated a roundtable discussion about internal controls for tax monitoring purposes.

The attendees spoke about internal controls applied by tax monitoring parties, and related accounting and internal control development trends.

“Tax monitoring provides an opportunity for our clients to reduce uncertainty over tax requirements and liabilities, make period-end closing faster, forget about desk and on-site tax audits and gain a reputation as a conscientious taxpayer. But apart from advantages, taxpayers face a series of obligations, for example the need to have an internal control system and observe a special procedure for information exchange with the tax authority,” Roman Kenigsberg said. 

According to Roman, tax monitoring sets a number of accounting and internal control trends, such as an increased significance of electronic financial data, unified methods of financial information exchange, automated control over reporting reliability, and formalised reporting unreliability risks and related containment measures.

“This creates both challenges and opportunities for internal audit, which may change the audit technology in the near future — allowing routine audit procedures to be robotised and shifting focus from paper-based reporting to audit of electronic databases of financial and other information, as well as IT audit of accounting and reporting tools,” he added.