The Recent Reform of Spanish Local Governmental Accounting: A Critical Perspective from Local Governmental Accountants as Internal Users of Budgeting and Financial Accounting Information

Local Government Accounting and Financial Reporting in Spain has been recently reformed by the new Accounting Instructions published in 2103 and in force since the 1st of January 2015. Once the financial reports corresponding to 2016 fiscal year have been published, the main purpose of this paper is to empirically evaluate, the perceptions and opinions that local governmental accountants have about the recent reform. Our analysis has found a clear gap between the aims of the reform and the opinion of local governmental accountants, who consider the system too complex and clearly biased towards financial accounting information.