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ON LOCAL GOVERNMENT ACCOUNTING HISTORY: THE CASE OF CENTRAL ESTABLISHMENT CHARGES
Author(s) -
Jones Rowan H.
Publication year - 1989
Publication title -
financial accountability and management
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.661
H-Index - 44
eISSN - 1468-0408
pISSN - 0267-4424
DOI - 10.1111/j.1468-0408.1989.tb00308.x
Subject(s) - accounting , local government , business , government (linguistics) , political science , public administration , linguistics , philosophy
During the municipal trading debate, which was the first major privatisation debate in this country, local government accounting was very controversial. The variety of treatments of central establishment charges was an important part of the controversy. In essence, the debate was a confrontation between the policy imperative, which required uniform accounting, including complete allocation, of central establishment charges across trading undertakings, with the theoretical doubts that this was unattainable. One aspect of the context of the debate was that policy‐makers did not have (and/or did not choose to have) the power to enforce their policies.