ABSTRACT Politicians, as representatives of the interests of citizens (public sector resource providers and service recipients), are deemed to be among the main users of accounting information, for the purposes of accountability and decision-making. IPSASB (2014) even assumes the legislature makes ‘extensive and ongoing use of GPFRs’. However, the reality in several jurisdictions seems to show politicians, namely parliamentarians, lack interest in using this type of information for their daily activities – the information is often rather complex, quite extensive and there seems to be a political rationale underlying the decision-making process for which accounting information is not given importance. This paper aims at broadly analysing whether politicians are users of accounting information. Using the Portuguese Parliament setting, it seeks to understand the degree of usefulness politicians find this information to have, what type of budgetary and financial information they use, and for what purposes. Finally, the research also tries to find out whether politicians resort to accounting expert intermediaries or advisors to help them in the use of this information. Findings show that, generally considering their lack of expertise in face of the complexity of the accounting information, politicians in the Parliament do not use it frequently. They might eventually and sporadically use some available cash-based budgetary information, as well as accrual-based information from the National Accounts, for their parliamentary activity. To be better or worse informed for the debates and other activities is a matter of each other’s will, despite some aggregated and previously analysed information made available by official technical support units. Parliamentarians may also resort to assessors, who prepare the information at their request. Both intermediaries and assessors are found important to support Parliamentarians understanding of more technical fiscal, economic and financial issues. Nevertheless, politicians acknowledge room for improvement, since most of those might not have the appropriate knowledge to make them understand, hence to better use, accounting information.

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Members of Parliament,accounting information needs,information understandability,accounting advisors/assessors.