Análise da legibilidade das notas explicativas das empresas do setor elétrico: das demonstrações contábeis do exercício de 2013 e 2021

Abstract

Accounting is a source of information. Users, usually from the corporate segment, for example, managers, investors, investment analysts, customers, government and everyone who requires economic and financial information. The explanatory notes gained greater relevance considering the volume of information disclosed in the financial statements. The IASB, EFRAG, FASB; the CPC, disclosed documents with the purpose of improving the quality of the information disclosed in the explanatory notes. This research demonstrates an analysis of the ease of reading and another analysis on the possibility of applying the concept of materiality to the information disclosed in the explanatory notes of the largest public company, in the Electric Energy segment, in the years 2013 and 2021. contributes to the presentation of methodology and the progress of accounting theory. According to the study carried out, materiality can be used as a tool to decide what information to disclose in explanatory notes. The Flesch formula was used to measure the readability index (ease of reading), statistical tests were applied, and the results obtained indicate that accounting narratives are classified as relatively difficult and difficult to read. To measure whether the company presented material information in the explanatory notes of its Financial Statements, the dichotomous index modified from the dichotomous index developed by Cooke (1992) was developed and used. The results show that between % of the information disclosed in the Financial Statements could have been excluded based on the established materiality. As a general consideration reached by this research, it is important to point out that while criteria for the calculation of materiality are not clearly established, little will be evolved regarding what information is actually relevant to be disclosed in the explanatory note