INTERNAL CONTROLS AND AUDIT

Tax inspections in Turkey were carried out until 2011 by Inspection Board of Finance, Account Experts Board, Department of Revenue Controllers, and tax auditors under the 29 directorates of tax administration without coordination between them. Subsequently,as a result of bringing together the central tax inspectors and provincial tax auditors who have served within these units under the same umbrella of the Turkish Tax Inspection Board, it is needed to identify the problems and to develop solutions for these problems by revealing the changes and developments in tax inspections related to the institutional structure. The main objective of this study is to identify the problems related to the institutional structure of tax inspections in Turkey and to offer solutions for these problems. In this context, this study was conducted with a qualitative research method. Research data was obtained through semi-structured interviews with a total of 36 participants, consisting of 8 taxpayers, 1...

This paper aims at understanding the accounting graduates' mindset on their decision to join audit firm as their initial career. It is due to the fact that the audit firms face the challenge of staff retention as majority of professional accountants choose to develop their careers in nonpublic practice. By using a qualitative research design, semi structured interviews were conducted to fourteen final year students from one of the tertiary institutions in Melaka, Malaysia. The results found that only 36 percent of the interviewees are very passionate about becoming professional auditor, while 43 percent do not have interest in becoming a professional auditor because they are reluctant to work under pressure with very low salaries and 21 percent who possess minimal interest in audit prefer to establish their own business or become a business consultant. These findings clearly indicate that audit firms will continue facing challenges in keeping graduates on the audit path if the graduates' mindset remain the same. Hence, discovering what motivates students to join the auditing profession may assist the tertiary educational providers as well as the audit firms into designing schemes to attract students by instilling new mindsets and motivates students to join the auditing profession.

Accounting is more integrated with the technology today compared to the previous years. The increase in a variety of technological developments and commercial transactions has further increased the number and type of errors as well as frauds related to the accounting profession. This causes misleading information for several stakeholders. Stakeholdes sometimes make false decisions based on the financial statements created as a result of false and fraudulent transactions. In order to minimize the errors and frauds concerning the accounting system of enterprises, effective internal controls and auditing systems should be in order. It is evident that, setting up the required internal controls and auditing systems reduce asset losses and provide great benefits in the long run for firms. Existence of strong internal controls and auditing systems in enterprises has gained great importance in Turkey. This study provides information about the audit techniques that can minimize accounting re...

This research aims to exploratively search relevant psychological determinants for debt repayment behavior. In this regard, the research question is: Which psychological factors affect the debt repayment behavior? Some research in literature argue that the socioeconomic factors alone may not be sufficient to explain debt and repayment behavior, and some other factors should be also utilized. This study will focus on psychological factors consisting of personality and attitudes. To the our best knowledge, in Turkey there is very limited amount of research conducted in this area and as one of the highest individual credit using countries it is essential to use psychological factors in credit risk evaluation processes. Thus, this research, examines effects of personality characteristics and attitude on debt repayment behavior in the context of Turkish culture, and is expected to fill a gap and to contribute to both national and international literatures. The study utilizes qualitative research methodology to explore psychological determinants and their effects on debt repayment behavior. In depth interview research methodology has been used to explore the personality characteristics and attitude influencing debt repayment behavior. The research findings revealed that, the responsibility, long term orientation, sanction fear, sense of collectivism, rational decision making and risk aversion are main characteristics of regular payers, while external locus of control, irresponsibility, short term orientation, irrational decision making, emotional imbalance are common characteristics of irregular payers. So, according to findings, , conscientious, time orientation, sanction fear, sense of collectivism, locus of control and decision making style can be enlisted as primary personal and attitudinal factors explaining the repayment behavior.

Accounting is more integrated with the technology today compared to the previous years. The increase in a variety of technological developments and commercial transactions has further increased the number and type of errors as well as frauds related to the accounting profession. This causes misleading information for several stakeholders. Stakeholdes sometimes make false decisions based on the financial statements created as a result of false and fraudulent transactions. In order to minimize the errors and frauds concerning the accounting system of enterprises, effective internal controls and auditing systems should be in order. It is evident that, setting up the required internal controls and auditing systems reduce asset losses and provide great benefits in the long run for firms. Existence of strong internal controls and auditing systems in enterprises has gained great importance in Turkey. This study provides information about the audit techniques that can minimize accounting related frauds and errors in businesses. The research includes and employs an interview with auditing professionals as the research methodology. Auditors working within three audit firms were selected by simple random sampling via the LinkedIn social media. The three participants were directed 10 semi-structured and open-ended questions. Qualitative analysis was adopted for this study. According to the results of research, companies use a number of tools to prevent accounting related frauds and errors. These most effective tools to minimize the frauds and errors are detected as internal auditing, internal controls and independent (external) auditing. Auditing professionals have high awareness about accounting related fraud and errors. But, auditor independency should be higher, proactive approach must be utilized and auditors must closely follow the new laws and regulations in addition to being familiar with the firms's operations and sectors to minimize the fraud and errors. The Benford's law, artificial neural networks, analytical methods, data mining, red flags and analytical methods are commonly used by the auditors against frauds and errors. In general, the internal controls and auditing professions are in a much better situation today in Turkey compared to the previous years. But, this is still not adequate and there is a long way to complete ahead based on the opinions of auditing professionals.

In accounting and auditing, internal control is defined as a process affected by an organization's structure, work and authority flows, people and management information systems, designed to help the organization accomplish specific goals or objectives. [1] It is a means by which an organization's resources are directed, monitored, and measured. It plays an important role in preventing and detecting fraud and protecting the organization's resources, both physical (e.g., machinery and property) and intangible (e.g., reputation or intellectual property such as trademarks).