Financial Reporting Practices of Italian SMEs: Why Do They Disclose More?

From reporting periods ending on or after 31 December 2014, Italian unlisted companies filing their financial statements under the national GAAP have to deposit them to the Business Register in fully XBRL format. In particular, for companies submitting their financial statements in the abbreviated form, the mandatory taxonomy has offered the option to use in their notes also the tables of the standard one: this means that they can voluntarily provide more information than that normally required by the law. In this paper, we investigate this phenomenon focusing on its level and analyzing the variables explaining the reasons that push Italian SMEs to use, in their abbreviated financial statements, non-compulsory tables that are proper of the standard ones. Based on a large sample of 8,738 elements, we report surprising results: more than 80% of the abbreviated financial statements include at least one table proper of the standard ones, while on average they include seven. In addition, when analyzing the determinants of this phenomenon we find that the only relevant variable explaining the number of optional tables included in the abbreviated financial statements is the software used for preparing them.