The European Parliament and the Council adopted in June 2013 Directive 2013/34/EU on the annual financial statements, consolidated financial statements and related reports of certain types of companies. Finland’s membership in the European Union obliged to implement the national legislation with the Directive by the 20th of July 2015. The Ministry of Employment and the Economy appointed a working group to examine amendments of the Accounting Act and other sectoral legislation on the related issue. The working group submitted its report to the Ministry 14th of October 2014. The working group proposed in the report to facilitate financial statements in small companies by introducing exemptions allowed by the Directive as widely as possible and bringing into force the possibility of special reliefs for micro-enterprises. Based on the Directive in the Finnish Accounting Act proposed to be reformed completely.

The objective of this thesis was to get a comprehensive understanding of amendments in the Finnish Accounting Act and thereby to make the commissioner’s employees well prepared to apply the new Accounting Act in their assignments. The research problem was approached with a qualitative research method. The qualitative research method was chosen for its flexibility and adabtability to the working environment. The data of the research was consisted of the field notes, the statements for the working group’s report and the financial statements of limited liability companies. As a data analysis method content analysis was used and was extended by numeric data of the financial statements. Validity and reliability of the data are proved by using a combination of data collection and the methods of analysis.

The findings of the study proved that the proposed reliefs for SME companies would complicate getting reliable information about companies. The proposed amendments may increase workload on drawning up financial statements. Excluding one of the business entities out of the Accounting Act would reduce transparency of certain business entities, which complicate de-tection of economic crime and the fight against the shadow economy.