[GNC] retained earnings in balance sheet: where does it come from?

[Andrea Borgia]

Hi.

While splitting a multi-year book, I saw that the (end of) 2016 balance 
sheet has an entry called "retained earnings" with a value of 54.10.

A find-by-value gives me an entry in jan.2017 from an account which has 
a tax-related flag set (and can't be changed, too): am I correct in 
assuming the report is referring to this one? Also, why don't I see a 
similar entry in the 2015 balance sheet for the corresponding 53.80 
entry involving the same accounts?

More to the point: can I just safely ignore it?
After all, the total assets and the total equity match.

Thanks,
Andrea.