Changes in Accounting Solutions for Transformations of Business Companies and Cooperatives since the Beginning of 2012

It can be concluded from an analysis and comparison of the legal and accounting concepts related to the amendment of the Transformation of Business Companies and Cooperatives Act and Regulation 500, that the amended regulations are characterized by an extensive right to choose in terms of business regulation. While the legal and accounting regulations until the end of 2011 addressed transformations generally as purchasings, the commercial and accounting regulations from 1st January 2012 provide solutions mainly for transformations of the restructuring type. The amendment offers a high degree of choice and thus provides space for both factual concepts, however, this fact is not specified in any of the appropriate regulations. The availability of all these possible variants, from the decisive date at the very beginning of the preparation and implementation of the transformation to the recognition of an entry of a transformation in the Register of Companies, as the record date, i.e., a combination of the decisive date and the effective date, leads to a complicated accounting view that is time-consuming, often confusing and, unfortunately, does not define the conditions for recognising a transformation with the substance of a purchase and a transformation with the substance of a restructuring. Highlighting the reflection based on individual accounting transactions for the participating companies, and especially in the unusual method included in the so-called opening balance sheet method, leads to a suppression of the information links between summary financial information from the financial statements on the entry into the transformation and the summarized financial information in the form of an opening balance sheet of the successor company.