Clasificación del capital social de la sociedad cooperativa: una visión crítica

The reform of international accounting standards, as a consequence of the process of harmonization of European accounting systems, involves significant changes to the financial instruments that affect all types of enterprises. Both the equity and liabilities of cooperatives, added to the impact of their very definition, should be considered in the light of the specific characteristics of their application in participating companies. An important debate arose when share capital was first considered as an instrument of debt in IAS32, which was developed in the IFRIC2 interpretation, although this was later questioned in the draft of amendments to IAS32 by the IASB. Reform in Spain seems to ignore this controversy. The aim of this article is to provide a critical yet constructive approach with alternative proposals for the classification and accounting of share capital in cooperatives, reviewing opinions that go against the initial proposals of international standards and the Spanish solution.