Serbia: The new draft law on accounting

August 31 2013


Jelena Janjic		Gordana Vucenovic

After several months of discussion, the Ministry of Finance and Industry has finalised the new draft law on accounting and forwarded it to the government of Serbia for further discussion and processing. The main changes contained in the draft are outlined below:

Definition of the term "other legal entities" has been clarified and extended;
The legal and internal regulations are defined more precisely;
Apart from the Law on Accounting, the legal regulations will include by-laws that will, among others, contain International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) and IFRS for SMEs;
Size classification for businesses has been synchronised with the IV EU Directive and a new category of micro entities introduced;
Deadline for submission of data for statistical and other needs will be the end of February of the current year for the previous year;
Deadline for submission of regular financial statements will be the end of June of the current year for the previous year, and consolidated financial statements must be submitted by end of July of the current year for the previous year;
There will be a possibility to submit summarised regular financial statements and reports for statistical processing by the end of February of the current year for the previous year;
It is defined that the complete IFRS will be applicable to large entities, entities liable for consolidated financial statements, public entities and entities preparing to become public;
In terms of archiving documents, the obligation of keeping the annual reports on operations is limited to 10 years, while the timeframes for keeping financial statements and audit reports remain 20 years;
It is provided that big entities, public entities and entities preparing to become public are obliged to prepare an annual financial report;
Financial statements will be delivered to the authorities electronically, signed by the qualified electronic signature of the legal representative;
It is provided that the dormant company is obliged to submit to the Business Register Agency (BRA) the statement of inactivity by the end of February of current year for the previous year;
It is provided that BRA is obliged to enable access to the financial statements for the last three years, free of charge;
It is provided that BRA has a separate database for the statistical and other needs;
The forming of National Committee for accounting and its inherencies;
The supervision of evidence of registration of business changes in the books will be led by the Tax Administration; and
The IFRS for SMEs will be applicable on financial atatements for 2014.