Accounting Law of the People's Republic of China (2024 Amendment)

(Adopted at the Ninth Session of the Standing Committee of the Sixth National People's Congress on January 21, 1985; amended in accordance with the Decision on Revising the Accounting Law of the People's Republic of China adopted at the Fifth Session of the Standing Committee of the Eighth National People's Congress on December 29, 1993; revised at the 12th Session of the Standing Committee of the Ninth People's Congress on October 31, 1999; amended for the second time in accordance with the Decision of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress on Amending Eleven Laws including the Accounting Law of the People's Republic of China adopted at the 30th Session of the Standing Committee of the Twelfth National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China on November 4, 2017; and amended for the third time in accordance with the Decision of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress on Amending the Accounting Law of the People's Republic of China adopted at the 10th Session of the Standing Committee of the Fourteenth National People's Congress of the People's Republic of China on June 28, 2024)
Contents
Chapter I General Provisions
Chapter II Accounting Practice
Chapter III Accounting Supervision
Chapter IV Accounting Offices and Accounting Personnel
Chapter V Legal Liability
Chapter VI Supplemental Provisions
Chapter I General Provisions
Article 1 This Law is enacted with a view to standardizing accounting acts, ensuring the truthfulness and completeness of the accounting materials, strengthening economic management and financial control, raising economic results and maintaining the order of the socialist market economy.
Article 2 In the accounting work, the Party's and state's line, principles and policies, decisions and arrangements shall be implemented, to safeguard public interest, and serve the national economy and social development.
State organs, social organizations, companies, enterprises, institutions and other organizations (hereinafter generally referred to as units) must handle accounting affairs in accordance with this Law.
Article 3 All units must set up account books according to law and ensure their truthfulness and completeness.
Article 4 The person in charge of a unit shall be responsible for its accounting work as well as the truthfulness and completeness of its accounting materials.
Article 5 Accounting offices and accounting personnel shall, in accordance with the provisions of this Law, conduct accounting practice and exercise accounting supervision.
No unit or person may, by any means, suggest, instruct or compel any accounting office or accountant to forge or alter any accounting document, account book or other accounting material or to submit any false financial accounting statement.
No unit or person is allowed to retaliate upon any accountant because of his resistance against any act violating the provisions of this Law in the performance of his duty.
Article 6 Moral encouragement or material award shall be given to any accountant who has shown conscientiousness in implementing this Law, devotion to his duty and consistence in principle, thus achieving remarkable results in his work.
Article 7 The department of finance under the State Council shall administer the accounting work throughout the country.
Departments of finance under local people's governments at or above the county level shall administer the accounting work in their respective administrative areas.
Article 8 The State practises a unified accounting system. The State's unified accounting system shall be formulated and promulgated by the department of finance under the State Council in accordance with this Law.
For those trades which have special requirements on accounting practice and accounting supervision, the relevant departments of the State Council may, in accordance with this Law and the State's unified accounting system, formulate concrete measures or supplementary provisions for the implementation of the State's unified accounting system and submit them to the department of finance of the State Council for examination and approval.
The state shall strengthen the construction of accounting informatization, and encourage the use of modern information technology to carry out accounting work in accordance with the law, and the specific measures shall be developed by the finance department of the State Council in conjunction with relevant departments.
Chapter II Accounting Practice
Article 9 All units must fulfil accounting practice, fill in and prepare accounting documents, record account books and work out financial accounting statements according to the economic and business transactions actually taken place.
No unit may fulfil accounting practice on the basis of untrue economic and business transactions or false materials.
Article 10 All entities shall undergo the accounting procedures and conduct accounting for the following economic business matters:
(1) Increase and decrease in and use of assets;
(2) Increase or decrease in liabilities;
(3) Increase or decrease in net assets (owners' equity);
(4) Increase or decrease in revenues, expenditures, expenses and costs;
(5) Calculation and treatment of financial results; and
(6) Other matters requiring accounting procedures and accounting.
Article 11 The fiscal year shall start on January 1 and end on December 31 on the Gregorian calendar.
Article 12 Renminbi shall be the basic accounting currency in accounting practice.
The units that use a currency other than Renminbi as chief currency in their business receipts and expenditures may select one specific currency as their basic accounting currency, but the accounts to be reported in their financial statements shall still be converted to and expressed in Renminbi.
Article 13 Accounting documents, account books, accounting statements and other accounting materials must all comply with the unified accounting system of the State.
Where computers are used for accounting practice, the software and accounting documents, account books, financial accounting statements and other accounting materials produced therefrom must also comply with the provisions of the State's unified accounting system.
No unit or person may forge or alter any accounting documents, account book or other accounting material, or submit any false financial accounting statement.
Article 14 Accounting documents include original documents and accounting vouchers.
In handling the economic and business transactions specified in Article 10 of this Law, original documents must be filled in or obtained, and be promptly submitted to the accounting office.
Accounting offices and accounting personnel must, in accordance with the provisions of the State's unified accounting system, examine and verify the original documents and are entitled to deny any untrue or illegal original document and report the case to the person in charge of the unit or and to return any original document which carries inaccurate or incomplete records and require it to be corrected or supplemented in accordance with the provisions of the State's unified accounting system.
All entries recorded in the original documents may not be altered; if an original document contains mistake, it shall be replaced with a new one or corrected by the issuing unit and a stamp of the issuing unit shall be affixed right over the place where the correction is made. If the amount of money in an original document is wrong, the issuing unit shall correct it by issuing a new document and may not do it by a correction on the original document.
Accounting vouchers shall be prepared according to the examined and verified original documents and related materials.
Article 15 Entries into account books must be based on the examined and verified accounting documents and comply with the provisions of related laws, administrative regulations and the State's unified accounting system. Account books include general ledgers, detailed ledgers, journal books and other auxiliary books.
Entries to an account book shall be recorded in the order of the pages consecutively numbered. Any occurrence of mistake, skip of page, omission of number or skip of line in the entry to an account book shall be remedied according to the method specified in the State's unified accounting system, and the interested accountant and the person in charge of the accounting office ( or the accountant-in-charge) shall affix their seals right over the place where remedy is made.
If computers are used for accounting practice, the entries and corrections of account books shall comply with the provisions of the State's unified accounting system.
Article 16 All economic and business transactions take place in a unit shall be recorded and calculated in the account books set up according to law, and no unit may, in violation of the provisions of this Law and the State's unified accounting system, set up privately any other account book for recording and calculating such transactions.
Article 17 All units shall regularly check the records in their account books against the property in kind, amount of money and related materials and shall ensure the conformity between the records in the account books and the actual amount of property in kind and money, the conformity of the related contents between the account books and the accounting documents, the conformity of the corresponding records between the relevant account books, and the conformity between the records of account book......