會計師輪調對審計公費和查核報告時效性之影響

Abstract

臺灣自2008年頒布審計準則公報第四十六號「會計師事務所之品質管制」後，將上市（櫃）公司之會計師任期定為七年，且輪調後至少兩年不得回任。因此本研究將從兩個層面直接探討會計師論調對會計師事務所查核工作與成本的影響，分別是審計公費(audit fees)與查核報告時效性(audit report timeliness)。 本研究以臺灣上市、上櫃公司為對象探討，並透過實證研究的方式證明會計師輪調對查核工作和查核成本的影響，惟該影響僅反應在查核報告時效性上，對於審計公費之影響較不明顯，本研究認為係因為受查客戶不願意補償因會計師輪調所產生的查核成本，或會計師避免失去客戶而選擇自行吸收額外的查核成本，不轉嫁予客戶。在查核資源未顯著增加的情況下，又有額外的查核工作必須執行，才使得查核人員的查核報告時效性下降，延長整體查核時間，影響查核報告之出具時間，且該等狀況在四大會計師事務所與大規模受查客戶的樣本中也有相同結果。故透過本實證研究，能再次為立法者和專家學者，提供另一項證據證明，實施會計師輪調的影響，不僅限於審計品質或盈餘品質，對查核工作而言，也是不容小覷的議題。

Audit partners in Taiwan under ROCGAAS No. 46 are required to rotate every seven years with a two-year cooling-off period. While lots of papers have already discussed the rotation effect on audit quality, this study differs from prior studies by empirically examining the rotation effect on audit cost in two aspects: audit fees and audit report timeliness. By using Taiwanese listed firms spanning from year 2009 to year 2016, this study finds that the audit partner rotation effect only exists in audit report timeliness, but not in audit fees. There are two possible reasons for this result. Firstly, the clients do not compensate for additional costs occurred from auditor rotation. Secondly, the audit firms tend to absorb additional audit cost to avoid losing clients. Under the circumstances of insufficient audit resources, additional audit work cause the audit report timeliness decreasing, as measured by longer audit report lag. The results remain robust in my sample of the Big 4 firms and the larger firms, respectively. The empirical findings provide implications for legislators, auditors and scholars that audit partner rotation not only affects audit quality or earnings quality but also influences audit work.