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In recent years, non-financial reporting has become a global practice used by businesses almost all over the world. Its dynamic development can be also recently observed in Poland, which is reflected in the growing number of corporate social responsibility (CSR) reports published voluntarily by enterprises. Their scope includes non-financial results obtained within the environmental, social and economic area and informs about the risk associated with the initiatives undertaken by companies. Although the data contained in CSR reports are informative to stakeholders and are used in the decision-making process, there is a certain concern that they may lack reliability (compare with Dal Maso et al., 2020). It is not out of the question that companies, while promoting their activities, will disclose only selected, usually positive, aspects of their operations. Therefore, it appears reasonable to subject the disclosures presented in CSR reports to an audit, which, in this context, means an independent and objective verification of the non-financial information contained in the report, and their attestation (confirmation) in terms of reliability.

By way of public budgets is in economically developed countries redistributed approximately one half of the produced GDP. According to the EUROSTAT data (EUROSTAT, 2012), total government expenditures in the EU countries (EU-7) accounted in 2012 for 48.9 % of GDP, of which expenditures on the local governments’ level accounted for 11.5% of GDP. In the Czech Republic, these expenditures stood in 2012 at 43.9% of GDP, while local governments’ spending accounted for 9.8% of GDP. A more detailed comparison of the ratio of total public expenditures to GDP and expenditures of local governments to GDP brings the following table.