未預期審計公費與關鍵查核事項之關聯性

The Association between Unexpected Audit Fees and Key Audit Matters

查核報告要提升其價值，可從改善資訊差距與期望差距著手，分別與財務報表使用者決策需要的資訊與對查核的瞭解有關。未預期審計公費隱含會計師對客戶會計品質之評估，包括查核風險與查核工作投入之未觀察到的審計成本，而關鍵查核事項則揭露會計師在查核工作中所認定之風險與因應之查核程序。本研究利用2016至2018台灣上市公司資料，探討未預期審計公費與關鍵查核事項揭露之關係。實證結果顯示未預期審計公費愈高，關鍵查核事項之項目數、解釋段字數、查核程序數、因應段字數愈多。關鍵查核事項之揭露有助於將會計師從事審計所獲得之資訊提供予財務報表使用者。

The value of an audit report can be enhanced by improving information gaps and expectations gaps, which are related to the information required by financial statement users for decision-making and their understanding of auditing. Unexpected audit fees reveal the auditor’s evaluation of the client’s accounting quality, which are unobserved costs of the client risk and audit effort, while the key audit matters disclose identified audit risks and the related audit procedures. This study examines the association between unexpected audit fees and the disclosure of key audit matters. Based on the listed firms on the Taiwan Stock Exchange from 2016 to 2018, the results show that when unexpected audit fees are higher, key audit matters disclose a greater number of items, explanation words, audit procedures, and response words. The disclosure of the key audit matters helps to provide users of financial statements with the information that the auditors obtained from the audit.