Certified Public Accountants Civil Liability In Our Country

Certified Public Accountants have specialized knowledge ofaccounting and are also experts in the field of accounting andauditing. With economic development, the practice of CertifiedPublic Accountants is playing an increasingly important rolein social life. The number of CPA is also increasing who havebecome defendants of civil action due to their practice. Thelegislation of our country has a tradition of “playingcriminal law and administrative law ahead of civil law”.Accordingly, at present time, the relevant laws and regulationsare more about CPAs’criminal liability and administrativeresponsibility, less about their civil liability. Civil lawsand regulations concerning CPA are not perfect, there existdifferent opinions on civil liability issues, so there are manyunresolved problems in this area.Before the mid-1960s, litigation disputes concerning CPAmainly involved the CPA and the clients and were resolved basingon contract law. Since the mid-1960s, the legal responsibilityof the CPA no longer confined to the field of contract law, itgradually transferred to the field of tort law. For a long time,there is controversy on judging civil liability of the CPA inthe legal profession, the accounting profession and among thepublic. In this paper, the author tries to analyze and discussthe nature, elements and components of the civil liability ofRegistered Accountants, from the perspective of accounting,auditing and the law, combining the principle of independentaccounting and auditing...