Abstract:

This article reviews the most topical trends in the Russian market of audit services, which covers and regulates all the spheres of professional audit activity. The ongoing transformations are closely related to the use of information technology in audit within the framework of the state program "Digital Economy of the Russian Federation", aimed at improving the quality of the audit industry as a whole. Nevertheless, there are definitely some positive trends in the reform of the Russian audit, the results of which can be assessed in the medium and long term perspective. The article analyzes the reasons for the need for harmonization of various areas of audit,  including the ambiguity of interpretation of a number of terms, the meaning of important indicators, the order of the use of some methods, as well as the need to develop a new audit concept. In the context of the digital economy, the negative impact of these differences on the efficiency of the audit sector is especially pronounced. As a result, the transformation of the audit sector is becoming a priority task in a situation where information/knowledge about any subject of the economy is an extremely valuable resource. The article examines the effect of digitalization of the economy on the accounting and auditing activities. The authors justify the predictions of inevitable changes in the audit,  such as the loss of relevance of the audit standards on identifying distortions resulting from manual operations  and the development of appropriate standards governing the actions of the auditor in the analysis of the provisions of the IFRS which stipulate for the use of professional judgement by the accountant. It is also proposed to develop a unified concept of audit in the conditions of digital economy, which should be based on the possibility of systematization of the auditor's actions aimed at identifying possible misstatements due to fraud. These principles provide the priority directions for further research in the audit sphere development in the conditions of digital economy.