Accounting for Income Taxes: Primer, Extant Research, and Future Directions

Abstract

This paper comprehensively reviews the Accounting for Income Taxes (AFIT) literature. We begin by identifying four distinctive aspects of AFIT. We cover the rules surrounding AFIT and provide a discussion of the descriptive studies related to AFIT. We then review the existing research studies in detail and offer suggestions for future research. We focus on the two research questions that have been most widely studied (the extent to which managers use the tax accounts to manipulate earnings and whether equity market participants price the tax accounts). We discuss econometric issues that apply to AFIT and more broadly apply to much accounting and economics research. We also highlight areas that have not received much research attention and that warrant future analysis.

Keywords: financial reporting, tax accounts, book-tax differences, earnings management

JEL Classification: M41, H20