SUMMARY
The existence of particular accounting and reporting systems for companies operating in different countries creates a difficulty in making comparisons among these companies. One of the most important attempts to fix this problem is the enforcement of IFRS as a single standard in all countries. The aim of this research is to identify the current situation of G20 countries regarding the adoption of IFRS as a global standard. To this end, the current status of IFRS and the process of its adoption in G20 countries is examined in order to determine the extent of IFRS’s adoption as a global accounting standard. For this purpose, certain criteria are determined by analyzing the reports prepared by IASB on the IFRS applications in 143 countries and then content analysis of the country reports of the G20 countries are provided based on these criteria.According to the findings of the study, although it is possible to observe that all G20 countries except USA accept IFRS as the global accounting standard, this does not lead to the adoption of IFRS at the national level. Most G20 countries either adopted IFRS or making preparations for its adoption. However, the facts that IFRS is not applied in the world’s two biggest economies, USA and China, as well as in Indonesia and India and its only partial application in Saudi Arabia and its status of optional application in Japan are striking. As a result it is possible to claim that even though IFRS has expanded largely, there is still room for progress to become the single global accounting language. Current literature on IFRS usually focuses on single countries or comparisons of few countries. This study will provide a contribution to the field by presenting the current situation in the entire G20 countries.