On Civil Liability For Certified Public Accountants

This paper tries to discuss accountants' liability on civil laws, and takes the liability to the third parties as the center. The aim of this paper is to provide the basis of law to judge the legal responsibilities of CPA, enhancing the communication between CPA and society, providing the practicable the suggestions for the construction of CPA legal system in our country. This paper is divided into three parts. Part one: Taking the relationship of professional responsibilities and legal responsibility as the starting point, this part briefly summarizes the development and changes of CPA professional responsibilities by recalling the history of auditing in the foreign countries. In order to understand the accountants' liability correctly, this part also analyses the history and situation of legal responsibility of CPA in China. Part two: This part discusses the theory basis of the accountants' liability to the third parties. In order to take the experience of foreign countries as a reference, this part compares of the feature and difference of accountants' liability to the third parties among the common law, e.g. U.S.A, civil law, e.g. German, and our law system. After this retrospection, we can find that we should resolve this question on the basis of our own legal system. It is better for us to choose tort law. Part three: This part chiefly discusses the questions of the accountants' liability to the third parties in our country, include the nature of this liability, the imputio principle of this liability and the elements of this liability. According to the statutory law, the accountants should work under the name of the accountants firm in our country. The accountants firm should be responsible for the accountants' torts. This part concentrates on the accountants' torts which is the third element of the liability.