All corporations based in South Korea beyond a certain sales and payroll level would be forced to get outside auditing on their annual financial statements from fiscal 2020, which means big foreign names such as Google, Apple, and Chanel may have to disclose their books on their business in Korea.

The Financial Service Commission on Tuesday held a meeting to draw up stricter audit rules by March.

In its new outline, Korea will expand the scope for businesses subject to regular outside auditing.

Regular external auditing is currently mandatory for companies with assets and debt beyond 7 billion won ($6.57 million) and employing 300 or more on top of entities that are publicly trading or plan to go public.

The financial authority is proposing to include sales as a criterion in annual statutory auditing requirement. The revenue threshold is expected to be set around 15 billion won in line with other advanced countries.

Moreover, it wants to make listed companies and privately-owned non-listed entities with assets of 100 billion won or more subject to scrutiny by state-designated auditors for three fiscal years out of nine. The rule will be exempted if a company’s accounting practices have been deemed credible for the past six years.

By Jin Young-tae and Kim Hyo-jin

[ⓒ Pulse by Maeil Business Newspaper & mk.co.kr, All rights reserved]