Lessons We Can Learn from Government and Accounting Relief Measures during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Comparative Study
Keywords:
COVID-19 Pandemic, Government relief measures, Accounting relief measures, Accounting considerationsAbstract
Governments around the world always face extreme uncertainty and unprecedented challenges. Food insecurity, climate change, and child labor and trafficking are among the top crises in the modern world. However, nowadays, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic is considered as the newest global crisis and the greatest challenge we have confronted since World War II. To alleviate the impact of COVID-19 pandemic, most governments have approved several kinds of government relief measures and stimulus packages that might be different, but appropriate for epidemiological and economic situations among countries. Furthermore, to support the government policies towards business in response to COVID-19, many accounting organizations around the world also provided some recommendations and guidance such as on government grants, for both financial statement preparers and users during the time of the crisis. In addition, in some countries such as Thailand, there were some accounting relief measures to help lessen the negative impacts of any management’s unreasonable judgement and unreliable estimates during the time of high uncertainty. It is undeniable that the COVID-19 shapes our modern history, and it is important and valuable lesson that we can learn from the past. Because government and accounting relief measures might have both benefits and potential drawbacks that we must compromise, learning from the COVID-19 crisis we are facing today will help us better understand how the relief measures work now, and it might help us determine how to approach any crisis prudently and effectively in the future.
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