Compliance of disclosure requirements of IFRS 15: an empirical evidence from developing economy

This paper has tried to assess the level of compliance of disclosure requirements of the International Financial Reporting Standard (IFRS) 15 "Revenue from Contracts with Customers" by the companies listed under Dhaka Stock Exchange in Bangladesh. For this purpose, a disclosure checklist of 40 mandatory IFRS 15 disclosure rules was prepared. A total of 88 companies under 14 industries were taken as sample based on the convenience sampling method. Data about the disclosure practices were collected from the annual reports of the sampled companies for 2019 and 2020 as the disclosure requirements are effective for the accounting period starting on or after January 1, 2018. It reveals that most of the companies are not fully complying with the IFRS 15 disclosure requirements even if the disclosure is mandatory for the last two years. Although the degree of compliance differs within the industries, the highest level of compliance is found in the telecommunication sector (76%) and the lowest level of compliance is observed in the IT sector (28%). The average compliance is around 50% that indicates a significant non-compliance (remaining 50%) of IFRS 15 requirement. The least complied areas are disclosure related to operating segments, performance obligation in the bill and hold arrangement, nature of goods and services in case of an agent, warranty, and changes in variable estimates. The findings of this study will have policy implications for the regulators. This is the pioneer study that has assessed the compliance level of IFRS 15 disclosures.