会计师事务所转制政策对审计定价的影响

The Influence of Switching Auditor Organizational Forms on Audit Fee

2010年以来,国家相关部门出台了一系列会计师事务所转制政策,推动大中型会计师事务所从有限责任制转为特殊普通合伙制,以实现事务所做大做强。事务所转制会加大审计师面临的法律责任,那么审计师如何应对法律责任的变化?是否会因为法律责任的提高向审计客户收取更高的审计收费呢?实证研究发现,尽管完成转制事务所的审计定价得到提高,但是与事务所转制政策没有直接关系。这说明在当前制度背景下,审计定价对审计师法律责任变化不敏感,可能与当前审计市场的行业特点有关。

Since 2010, the large and medium-size audit firms have been forced to switch the organizational forms from limited liability company to limited liability partnership by Chinese regulators. The transformation of audit firms makes auditors facing higher legal liability, then, how can they deal with the change on legal liability？ Will they charge more for auditing？ On the basis of these transformation policies, this paper is to investigate the influ- ence of legal liability on audit firms by comparing the pricing tendency before and after the transformation. And we find that there＇s on no direct relationship between the rise of audit pricing and switch the organization forms. This shows that audit fee is not sensitive to the change of auditor legal liability, which may rely on the characteristics of current audit market.