That’s how much Canadian companies paid on average in audit fees in 2019, up from $621,000 in 2018, according to a post by our friends at Canadian Accountant, citing research from Audit Analytics:
“Since 2007, the average amount of audit fees per Canadian company has continued to increase each year, with the largest increase coming in 2019, when all fee categories saw significant increases in totals,” reports Audit Analytics.
At the same time, only 2,350 Canadian issuers reported audit fees — a 34.5% decrease from the 2,963 issuers in 2018 — which Audit Analytics says is “similar to the trends we’ve seen among SEC registrants, the number of SEDAR issuers has been declining over the years.”
The decline in issuers is primarily due to—what else?—the coronavirus pandemic, which has contributed to mass disruption to periodic filings on a global scale, CA wrote:
[T]he Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) originally believed that the impact of the coronavirus on Canadian audit firms was “fairly low,” but ultimately provided blanket relief from regulatory filing requirements. According to Audit Analytics, “many issuers in Canada opted to take advantage of blanket relief extensions on periodic filings offered by securities regulatory authorities.”
In addition, audit-related fees increased 23.5%, up from an average of $117,000 in 2018 to $153,000 in 2019, and non-audit fees increased 24.1%, from an average of $101,000 in 2018 to $133,000 in 2019, according to Audit Analytics data.
Canadian audit fees jump as public filings plunge for 2019 [Canadian Accountant]
Canadian Audit Fees Still on the Rise [Audit Analytics]
