Accrual based government accounting and implementation of public sector accounting standards in Turkey

Government accounting is defined in its simplest form as the accounting of government activities. Political and economic developments in the world have diversified the activities carried out by states and therefore the financial data needed by decision makers. In addition, international political and economic cooperation has necessitated the presentation of financial data in a common language for comparability, thus standardization. Government accounting practices in our country have also undergone a radical transformation in order to comply with this standardization, especially with the harmonization efforts with the European Union acquis and the Public Financial Management and Control Law No. 5018. An important part of this transformation is the implementation of Government Accounting Standards (DMS) published based on International Public Sector Accounting Standards. The purpose of this study; to identify problems that may be encountered in the application of published and future DMSs and to offer solution suggestions. In this context, in the study; First of all, the concept of government accounting, Turkish government accounting systems, the transformation of government accounting in our country, the regulations introduced by government accounting standards and their applications are discussed. In this context, the recording methods of financial transactions according to the state accounting legislation and DMS regulations were examined with the application examples given in the last part of the study, and it was tried to determine whether there are differences in terms of regulations. It has been determined that the compliance rate with DMS in terms of accounting records of the financial transactions exemplified in the study is generally high, but different accounting records are adopted for some transactions. It has been determined that this situation is due to the fact that government accounting practices are tightly surrounded by legislative provisions and some legislative provisions regarding accounting practices are different from the accounting recording principles required by DMS; Opinions and suggestions on how to eliminate the detected differences are included. Key Words: Government Accounting, Accrual Principle, Government Accounting Standards, Financial Statistics, Republican Period