Audit Reports of Public State-owned Foundations: Determining Factors in Audit Opinions (El Informe de Auditoria de las Fundaciones Publicas Estatales: Factores Determinantes del Tipo de Opinion)

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to determine the relationship between the opinion given in audit reports of public state-owned foundations and a set of characteristics pertaining to these foundations. Establishing such a relationship should help to improve foundation management and control. To this end a theoretical framework has been built, within which the expected effects of the different audit opinion variables are presented – foundation size, type of auditor, tax-year surplus, previous year’s opinion and which government department the foundation belongs to. Then, in order to develop the study, different logistic regression models have been calculated using a sample of 256 foundations audited over the period 2002 to 2008. The results highlight the fact that the opinion given in the previous year’s audit reports of public state-owned foundations is the main factor in determining the kind of opinion given in the current year. Other opinion-influencing factors are the government department link, foundation size and type of auditor.