Deloitte responded to the Auditing and Assurance Standards Board’s Exposure Draft : The Auditor's Responsibilities Relating to Other Information - May 2014.

We support the AASB in adopting the proposed ISA 720 (Revised) and conforming amendments to other ISAs issued by the IAASB in an effort to "bring greater clarity and enhanced consistency around the world regarding the auditor's responsibilities related to other information." However, we have concerns regarding consistency in the application of these requirements across audits of Canadian small and medium-sized entities, particularly in situations where the other information is received subsequent to the date of the auditor's report.

Another area of concern for which the proposed standard does not address is that the auditor may be unable to perform procedures on the other information issued at a later date in situations where the auditor is no longer engaged by the entity after the completion of the current year's audit engagement.

We are also raising a number issues relating to the documentation requirements.

We recommend that application guidance be added to the proposed ISA 720 (Revised) to clarify that the MD&A may be the only other information in scope for the purposes of fulfilling the auditor's requirements under this standard, and would not extend to the annual report subsequently released by the entity.

We believe it would be useful to provide additional application guidance regarding the documents included in the scope of the proposed standard, particularly for public section and not-for-profit organizations where the reporting regime is typically less structured and more staggered and therefore, it may not always be clear or apparent for the auditor of such entities to detemine which documents are in scope and up to which period of time the auditor assumes responsibility for identifying and reading the other information released subsequent to the date of the auditor's report.

Download