Did PCAOB rules on ethics,independence, and tax services influence financial reporting for income taxes?

The PCAOB Rules on Ethics, Independence, and Tax Services prohibited accounting firms from providing aggressive tax-position transactions to their audit clients. We exploit this setting to examine whether the scrutiny of the PCAOB affects companies’ financial reporting for income tax accounts. We find robust evidence that the overall quality of the income tax accrual increased after companies significantly reduced auditor-provided tax service (APTS) fees in response to the regulation. We show that this improvement is a function of companies’ pre-regulation tax aggressiveness. In addition, we find evidence that after the fee reductions, tax-aggressive companies increased financial statement reserves for uncertain income tax positions without changing tax-aggressive decisions. Overall, our findings are consistent with an improvement in the financial reporting for income taxes under regulatory scrutiny which is more pronounced for companies that were tax aggressive in the pre-regulation period.     

The relation between aggressive financial reporting and aggressive tax reporting: Evidence from ex-Arthur Andersen clients

We investigate the economic trade-offs managers face due to conflicting incentives to report high financial statement book income and, at the same time, report low taxable income. Our setting involves Houston clients of Arthur Andersen (AA), who have been shown to exhibit a culture of aggressive financial reporting. Using our sample of AA Houston clients, we test two competing theories: (1) firms which have a culture of aggressive financial reporting are also aggressive in their tax reporting, versus (2) firms which are willing to pay real dollars (taxes) to report higher financial statement earnings. We do not find support for either theory. Instead, our findings suggest a middle-ground: firms may exhibit a culture of aggressive financial reporting without impacting their relative tax reporting. Our findings not only shed light on the intersection of financial and tax reporting, but they also add to the extant literature involving the culture of AA. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first paper to investigate the tax ramifications of AA’s culture of aggressive financial reporting.     

Conservatism,SEC investigation,and fraud

We present evidence on the relationship between firms that have engaged in fraudulent financial reporting and accounting conservatism. We empirically investigate the extent to which US firms identified by the SEC in their Enforcement Releases demonstrate higher levels of conditional conservatism in order to mitigate information asymmetry and agency problems. Specifically, by assessing the timing of changes in the litigation risk environment for fraud firms, we document how differences in heightened legal liability guide changes in conservative accounting behavior. Compared to a matched non-fraud control sample, we document that fraud firms have significantly lower levels of accounting conservatism in the pre-fraud period. Consistent with changes in potential legal liability, we find an increase in accounting conservatism for fraud firms during the SEC investigation period. Subsequently, during the public discovery of fraud, any increases in accounting conservatism are marginal and appear to converge back to lower levels compared to the SEC investigation period. Overall, our findings suggest more temporary changes in conservative reporting in the short-term for fraud firms. We also document that increased levels of accounting conservatism for fraud firms are not due solely to the passage of the SOX Act. Our findings aid in explaining fraud firms’ incentives and opportunities for accounting conservatism and lend support for why standard setters, regulators and auditors should continue to monitor and re-evaluate conservatism’s short-term effects that are conditioned on changes in a firm’s risk environment.     

Firms' Off-Balance Sheet and Hybrid Debt Financing: Evidence from Their Book-Tax Reporting Differences

We match large U.S. corporations' tax returns during 1989–2001 to their financial statements to construct a firm‐level proxy of firms' use of off‐balance sheet and hybrid debt financing. We find that firms with less favorable prior‐period Standard & Poor's (S&P) bond ratings or higher leverage ratios in comparison to their industry report greater amounts of interest expense on their tax returns than to investors and creditors on their financial statements. These between‐firm results are consistent with credit‐constrained firms using more structured financing arrangements. Our within‐firm tests also suggest that firms use more structured financing arrangements when they enter into contractual loan agreements that provide incentives to manage debt ratings. Specifically, we find that after controlling for S&P bond rating and industry‐adjusted leverage, our sample firms report greater amounts of interest expenses for tax than for financial statement purposes when they enter into performance pricing contracts that use senior debt rating covenants to set interest rates. Furthermore, we find that the greatest book‐tax reporting changes occur when firms become closer to violating these debt rating covenants. These latter findings are consistent with firms' contractual debt covenants influencing their use of off‐balance sheet and hybrid debt financing.     

Government ownership,corporate governance and tax aggressiveness: evidence from China

This study investigates how government ownership and corporate governance influence a firm's tax aggressiveness. Using Chinese listed companies during 2003–2009, we find that compared with government‐controlled firms, non‐government‐controlled firms pursue a more aggressive tax strategy. In particular, non‐government‐controlled firms with a higher percentage of the board shareholdings and with a CEO who also serves as the board chairman are more aggressive. For government‐controlled firms, we find that board shareholding has an impact on tax aggressiveness and it does not differ between local and central government‐controlled firms. However, local government‐controlled firms in less developed regions where the implementation of corporate governance measures is generally less effective are more tax aggressive than those in other regions.     

CEO overconfidence and IRS attention

We examine the likelihood that the US Internal Revenue Service (IRS), in its enforcement role, will accord particular attention to firms that are managed by CEOs who exhibit over-confidence, given that such CEOs may be more aggressive in their tax policies and strategies. Using data from 7757 firms, we find that this is indeed the case. Such attention is even more pronounced in the instance of overconfident CEOs whose firms are financially constrained and/or financially distressed. We also find that the IRS has augmented its audit processes to give more attention to overconfident CEOs during and post financial crisis. This may be due to the increased vulnerability of their firms to external shocks, which consequently increases the incentives to embark on tax avoidance strategies, value-destroying investments, and/or highly biased financial reporting (and forecasting responses) to tax authorities. Our results are robust after accounting for the possibility of endogeneity and using a wide range of specifications, measures, and econometric models.     

Taxes and Financial Constraints: Evidence from Linguistic Cues

Using a new measure of financial constraints based on firms’ qualitative disclosures, we find that financially constrained firms—firms that use more negative words in their annual reports—pursue more aggressive tax planning strategies as evidenced by: (1) higher current and future unrecognized tax benefits, (2) lower short‐ and long‐run current and future effective tax rates, (3) increase in tax haven usage for their material operations, and (4) higher proposed audit adjustments from the Internal Revenue Service. We exploit the unexpected closures of local banks as exogenous liquidity shocks to show that firms’ external financial constraints affect their tax avoidance strategies. Overall, the linguistic cues in firms’ qualitative disclosures provide incremental information beyond traditional accounting variables or commonly used effective tax rates to reveal and predict tax aggressiveness, both contemporaneously and in the future.     

An examination of firms’ responses to tax forgiveness

This study uses state tax amnesties to examine how firms respond to forgiveness—particularly repeated forgiveness—by a taxing authority. We posit that tax forgiveness programs alter taxpayer perceptions of the probability of detection by enforcers or the probability of future forgiveness programs, either of which could affect future tax aggressiveness. We find that firms headquartered in an amnesty-granting state increase state income tax aggressiveness following the first instance of tax amnesty, relative to control firms in other states. Moreover, we find evidence that tax aggressiveness incrementally increases with each additional repetition of a tax amnesty. Finally, we find that the effect of amnesties on tax aggressiveness is more prominent for small firms, which face less scrutiny and for which the tax aggressiveness measures are less confounded. Our findings suggest that repeated programs of tax forgiveness have increasingly negative implications for corporate tax collections.     

A Comparison of Between‐Country Measures of Legal Setting and Enforcement of Accounting Standards

Academics and practitioners agree that the enforcement of accounting standards has an important role in promoting high quality financial reporting and favourable capital market outcomes. We test three new enforcement proxies from Brown, Preiato and Tarca (2014) that focus specifically on auditing and accounting enforcement. We examine firms’ information environments, represented by the error in analysts’ consensus forecasts and the extent of disagreement among analysts, as indicated by forecast dispersion. For financial years ending from 2003 to 2009, we construct a sample of 357,034 firm–month observations on the errors and dispersion of analysts’ earnings forecasts for 10,769 firms domiciled in those 39 countries. We find that higher scores for all three proxies are associated with lower error and less disagreement in forecasts. In addition, we find that the indices have significant explanatory power when previously used enforcement proxies (such as Kaufmann et al.'s 2010 rule of law measure) are included in the regression models, pointing to the importance of specific measures of accounting enforcement. We conclude that accounting enforcement may be more important in securing favourable economic outcomes than has been previously realised, because researchers commonly have used noisier, more general legal proxies for enforcement that understate its marginal effects.     

An analysis of earnings management by European private firms

This paper addresses the questions of whether private firms in eight European countries engage in earnings management, and if so, whether tax incentives affect such practices. To measure earnings management, we analyze the earnings distributions of private firms and compare these distributions with those of public firms in the same countries. The empirical evidence suggests that in absence of capital market pressures, firms still have incentives to manage earnings, as we find that private firms avoid reporting small losses. We further find that private firms in some countries where tax regulation strongly influences financial accounting do not avoid reporting small losses. We attribute this finding to tax incentives reducing firms’ benefits of (upward) earnings management. Finally, our results suggest that some types of earnings management are due to capital market pressures and are specific to public firms since we do not find evidence that private firms avoid earnings decreases.     

Does corporate tax avoidance promote managerial empire building?

We examine the association between corporate tax avoidance and empire building using 35,060 firm-year observations from the United States (US) for the period 1991–2015. We build a composite empire building measure by conducting a factor analysis on four popular empire building proxies used in the literature. We find a positive association between this composite measure and the four proxies used to represent the tax avoidance of firms in our sample. As our results suggest, agency problems are inflicted upon firms employing tax avoidance strategies which, in turn, facilitate managerial rent extraction through aggressiveness in growth and the accumulation of assets. Furthermore, the relationship of corporate tax avoidance to managerial empire building is found to be more pronounced in firms with weak governance, poor monitoring mechanisms, greater Chief Executive Officer (CEO) power and weak corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance. We also find that empire building-motivated tax avoidance leads to lower firm valuation. Our results remain insensitive even when employing several robustness tests.     

An empirical analysis of the effects of monitoring intensity on the relation between equity incentives and earnings management

Prior studies suggest that equity incentives inherently have both an interest alignment effect and an opportunistic financial reporting effect. Using three distinct proxies for earnings management we find evidence consistent with the incentive alignment (opportunistic financial reporting) effect of equity incentives increasing as monitoring intensity increases (decreases). Furthermore, using the accrual-based earnings management and meet/beat analyst forecast models we find that the opportunistic financial reporting effect of equity incentives dominates the incentive alignments effect for firms with low monitoring intensity. Using proxies for real earnings management, we find that the incentive alignment effect dominates the opportunistic financial reporting effect for high and moderate monitoring intensity firms. However, for low monitoring intensity firms the opportunistic reporting effect mitigates, but does not completely offset, the benefits of the incentive alignment effect. Overall, these findings are consistent with the level of monitoring affecting the relation between equity incentives and earnings management.     

Directors’ and Officers’ Liability Insurance and Aggressive Tax‐Reporting Activities: Evidence from Canada

This paper examines the relationship between directors’ and officers’ liability insurance (D&O insurance) and firms’ aggressive tax reporting. Using large Canadian public companies listed on the TSX300 and relying on several measures to capture aggressive tax‐reporting activities, including GAAP effective tax rates, cash effective tax rates, and the total and residual book‐tax differences, I find that D&O insurance exhibits a strong negative relationship with the GAAP effective tax rates and a strong positive relationship with both the total and residual book‐tax differences. However, there is generally no evidence showing that D&O insurance is associated with the cash effective tax rates. I interpret these results as indicating that D&O insurance reduces the tax expenses reported in the financial statements but not the actual tax paid. In other words, D&O insurance contributes to financial tax management but not to cash tax savings. Further tests in this study reveal that firms with fluctuating D&O coverage limits engage in more aggressive tax reporting than other firms, suggesting that managers may consider the level of D&O insurance that they purchase when they make aggressive tax‐reporting decisions.     

Analyst coverage and corporate tax aggressiveness

We examine the impact of analyst coverage on corporate tax aggressiveness. To address endogeneity concerns, we perform a difference-in-differences analysis using a setting which causes exogenous decreases in analyst coverage. Our tests identify a negative causal effect of analyst coverage on tax aggressiveness, suggesting that higher analyst coverage constrains corporate tax aggressiveness. Further cross-sectional variation tests find that this constraining effect on tax aggressiveness is more pronounced in firms with lower investor recognition and firms with more opaque information environments. Our results are consistent with the notion that higher analyst coverage increases the visibility of aggressive tax planning behavior as well as heightens analysts’ demand for more transparent information, which in turn reduces tax aggressiveness.     

Aggressive reporting,investor protection and stock price informativeness: Evidence from Chinese firms

This paper investigates the impact of aggressive reporting on the ability of stock prices to inform in Chinese firms. Using both stock price synchronicity and the probability of informed trading as proxies for stock price informativeness, we find that aggressive reporting damages the ability of stock prices to inform in Chinese firms. Our findings are robust to potential endogeneity and the use of alternative aggressive-reporting measures. Finally, we find that the impact of aggressive reporting in reducing stock price informativeness is stronger in firms located in regions of weaker institutional development and in private sectors firms.     

The Effect of Accounting Conservatism on Corporate Investment during the Global Financial Crisis

This paper examines the effect of accounting conservatism on firm‐level investment during the 2007–2008 global financial crisis. Using a differences‐in‐differences design, we find that firms with less conservative financial reporting experienced a sharper decline in investment activity following the onset of the crisis compared to firms with more conservative financial reporting. This relationship was stronger for firms that were financially constrained, faced greater external financing needs, or had higher information asymmetry. We also find that more conservative firms experienced lower declines in both debt‐raising activity and stock performance. The evidence suggests that accounting conservatism reduces underinvestment in the presence of information frictions.     

Financial Reporting Quality,Structural Problems and the Informativeness of Mandated Disclosures on Internal Controls

Even before firms report internal control weaknesses under the Sarbanes–Oxley Act (SOX), they are characterized by structural problems, are prone to internal control weaknesses, and have low financial reporting quality. If the stock market incorporates much of this information during the pre‐disclosure years, investors are less surprised when firms subsequently report internal control weaknesses under SOX. We find that for the pre‐disclosure period, firms reporting internal control weaknesses under SOX, (1) had structural problems, (2) were prone to internal control problems, and (3) had low financial reporting quality. Further, we provide direct evidence that stock prices during pre‐disclosure years incorporate much of the information about structural problems, the likelihood of internal control weaknesses, and low reporting quality. Finally, we find that many of these value‐relevant factors are not related to announcement period returns when firms eventually disclose such problems under SOX and that limited new information about structural problems is generated around this date. Our results provide a compelling explanation for the muted stock price reaction around the mandatory disclosure date.     

基于GONE理论的上市公司财务报告舞弊识别研究

本文基于GONE理论,剖析了财务报告舞弊诱因的影响机理和舞弊行为的决策权衡机理,并选取2006～2009年因财务舞弊受处罚的上市公司为样本,实证分析了贪婪、机会、需要和暴露四因素与财务报告舞弊的关系,结果发现:在控制了一系列因素以后,管理层的风险偏好和剩余索取权引发的个体贪婪程度越高,治理结构不完善制造的舞弊机会越多,增发配股引发的组织需要程度越高,舞弊的可能性越大;审计意见类型和会计师事务所变更代表的发现机制越完善,暴露的可能性越大,舞弊的可能性越小。     

Accounting and litigation risk: evidence from Directors’ and Officers’ insurance pricing

We study whether and how financial reporting concerns are priced by insurers that sell Directors’ and Officers’ (D&O) insurance to public firms. As D&O insurers typically assume the liabilities arising from shareholder litigation, the premiums they charge for D&O coverage reflect their assessment of a company’s litigation risk. Using a sample of public firms in the 2001–2004 Tillinghast D&O insurance surveys, we document that firms with lower earnings quality or prior accounting restatements pay higher premiums after controlling for other factors impacting litigation risk. In addition, insurers’ concerns about financial reporting are most evident for firms with restatements that are not revenue or expense related, are greater in the period following the passage of the Sarbanes–Oxley Act of 2002, and are greater for firms with financial reporting problems that linger. Our results are consistent with past restatements being viewed as evidence of chronic problems with a firm’s financial statements. By analyzing archival data, we can also quantify the effects of other determinants of D&O premiums (such as business risk, corporate governance, etc.) identified by Baker and Griffith (Univ Chic Law Rev 74(2):487–544, 2007a) through interviews regarding the D&O underwriting process.     

Financial distress,outside directors and corporate tax aggressiveness spanning the global financial crisis: An empirical analysis

We examine financial distress and tax aggressiveness spanning the global financial crisis (GFC) of 2008 and the impact of the interaction between board independence and firm-specific financial distress on tax aggressiveness. Our regression results show that both financial distress and the GFC are positively associated with tax aggressiveness. More importantly, we find that the positive association between financial distress and tax aggressiveness is magnified by the GFC. We also observe that the interaction between board independence and financial distress is positively associated with tax aggressiveness. Our results are robust to multiple measures of financial distress and tax aggressiveness.