Document Type : Original Article

Author

Department of Accounting, Lahijan Branch, Islamic Azad University, Lahijan, Iran.

Abstract

Accounting disclosure is made through the publication of annual financial reports of companies. The disclosed information should have appropriate features that facilitate understanding for user groups. On the other hand, the credibility of financial reports is created by hiring independent auditors, which creates significant audit costs to achieve this credibility. The readability of financial reports is one of the issues that affects the auditor's credit performance and audit costs. It seems that complex annual financial reports, which are less readable, increase the amount of tests required by auditors, and unlike financial reports with high readability, the auditor's proof tests reduce the time and cost of processing. . The aim of the present study is to evaluate the effect of the readability of the financial reports of banks admitted to the Tehran Stock Exchange on the audit fee during the years 2005 to 2021. For this purpose, 10 accepted banks were examined during these years with the unbalanced panel method. To measure the readability of financial reports, three indicators of fog, flash and report length were used. The results of the research indicate that the readability of financial reports has an effect on the audit fee, but the first audit does not strengthen the intensity of this relationship. Also, the results showed that the tenure of auditors plays a moderating role for the relationship between readability and audit fees.

Keywords

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