“Assessing the Adequacy of Computerized Accounting for French Companies: Determining the Appropriate Level of Information”

The administration considering the implementation of computer processing within the framework of the tax audit of computerized accounting must describe them in a letter sent to the audited company.

When a company is the subject of a tax audit and it keeps computerized accounts, it must give the auditor a dematerialized copy of its files of accounting entries from the start of the audit. Most often, this control requires the implementation of computer processing, which is carried out, at the choice of the company:
– by the auditor on the company’s equipment;
– by the company itself on its own equipment;
– or by the verifier, outside the premises of the company, by means of copies provided by the company on computer media.

In order for the company to be able to choose between these three options, the verifier must send it a letter describing the nature of the investigations it wishes to carry out. A letter which must contain sufficiently precise information for this choice to be made with full knowledge of the facts, without however constituting a “specification”.

As such, the Council of State has just clarified that the administration is not required to mention, in this letter, the possibility of a reconstitution of the revenue. In this case, an auditor had, by letter delivered by hand to the legal representative of the inspected company, informed the latter that the computer processing envisaged consisted of “ensuring the consistency and completeness of the sales and payments recorded “, to “control the VAT rates applied to the items sold”, to “control the correction and cancellation procedures used on the cash register system, in particular from the integrated traceability elements”. This letter also referred to “any processing intended to validate the consistency and completeness of the data required for these various analyses”. Sufficient information, considered the judges.