Earnings Management Choices in Response to Tax Rate Increases
Posted: 22 Feb 2013
Date Written: February 2013
Abstract
This paper investigates the underexplored issue of whether and how firms manage their earnings when tax rates increase. We hypothesize and find that firms generally choose to manage their taxable income upward in a book-tax non-conforming manner rather than in a book-tax conforming manner before a tax rate increment, which in turn reduces the book-tax difference as well as the detection risk of earnings management. These results suggest that firms give more weight to tax incentives and tax audit or regulatory inspection risks than to boosting financial reporting income in tax management. However, when firms have higher earnings management incentives or lower tunneling incentives (i.e., non-state-owned enterprises), we find that they manage their taxable income and book income upward together (i.e., in a book-tax conforming manner), whereas their counterparts (i.e., state-owned enterprises) do not. Overall, our paper contributes to the literature by demonstrating the interplay of tax, tunneling and earnings management incentives in influencing tax management strategies.
Keywords: tax-induced earnings management, book-tax conformance, book-tax differences, financial reporting
JEL Classification: M4, H25
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation