Assessing Underlying Realities of Accounting’s Duality Check by the Accounting Equation: a Search for an Augmented Framework

This paper explores a general validity of the prevalent Accounting Equation in determining the real wealth and accountability discharge through contemporary financial reporting. In so doing, an augmented accounting framework is developed in order to indicate the gaps that may arise in the Accounting Equation; which is inherent in the system if compared among different layers – sign to alleged to referent (Buarillard 1983, 1994; MacIntosh 2000, Ijiri 1986, and Mattessich 2003). We argue that this augmented framework will help in enhancing our understanding, at least at the level of pedagogy and for corporate governance and discharging social responsibility, about the missing elements and the nature of financial reporting including the determination of fair values and therefore, reduce the blaming games of maintaining objectivity and neutrality about information provision for an augmented reality of wealth (economic or otherwise) for an entity.