Accounting year ends

It's so that the publishers COULD use the same question 10, 12, 15 years on. So 20X3 could be taken to be 2003, 2013 or 2023 and the publishers don't need continually to be changing the dates in their publications.

In fact, very few questions last for the full ten years, so there's really no justification for doing it this way! What's the problem with writing a question today, in 2012, and using the date ( say ) 31 May, 2012? It will still be a valid question in 4, 5, 6 etc years' time

The significance of the 19w8 for the date of an asset purchase is to indicate that it was bought towards the end of the previous decade ( "w" is one letter before "x" and if "x" is 3 as 20x1 is 2031, then 20w9 must be 2029. Similarly, 20v7 must be the year 2017 ( although I have never seen a question referring to an event from 2 decades previous! )