Professional managers and business owners are to serve the interests of both its internal and external stakeholders by delivering maximum profit results and a stable financial condition of their respective organizations. To do this, they must be able to control, mitigate or eliminate the many potential risks that affect the business organization.
On top of unwanted losses and litigation, they are faced with tax assessments from various government agencies. These, at times, may compel them to adopt a stringent method of monitoring and recording financial transactions to minimize these exposures.
One of the strategies is to focus on particular risk areas including taxation. In doing so, professional managers and business owners may be compelled to maintain a separate set of records in addition to other financial records used internally.
For as long as the objective of preparing a separate record is clean and without the intention to evade tax payments due and to defraud the respective government tax agencies, this so-called practice is within the ethical standards of the business circle as a whole.
To erase any cloud of doubt and to control and avoid accounting scandals, several codes of ethics governing the practice of recording and reporting financial information, has been crafted. Provisions on integrity, disclosure, management representation, competence, independence and many others are often emphasized in the preparation and presentation of financial data.
In the end, however, it is only with a strong moral conviction of owners and managers to conduct their undertakings with utmost integrity that fulfils the objective of these codes. But this may be easier said than done – for beyond a clean business intention lie the woes of taxation and other risks that can cause the moral standards of these owners and managers to lean on the darker side of