Audit Adjustments and Public Sector Audit Quality

In the context of austerity-inspired reforms to public audit in England we investigate the extent to which audit firms mitigate management bias in public sector financial reports. A substantial body of literature finds that both public and not-for-profit managers manage ‘earnings’ to report small surpluses close to zero by managing deficits upwards and surpluses downwards. Under agency theory, auditors acting in the interests of their principal(s) would tend to reverse this bias. We exploit privileged access to pre-audit financial statements in the setting of the English National Health Service (NHS) to investigate the impact of audit adjustments on the pre-audit financial statements of English NHS Foundation Trusts over the period 2010–2011 to 2014–2015. We find evidence that auditors act to reverse management bias in the case of Trusts with a pre-audit deficit, but find no evidence that this is the case for Trusts with a pre-audit surplus. In the case of Trusts in surplus, these findings are consistent with auditors’ interests being aligned with management, rather than principals.     

Local Gambling Attitudes and Audit Quality: Evidence from Audit Adjustments

This study examines the influence of local gambling attitudes on audit quality. As a preference for gambling correlates to a greater tendency to take risks, we hypothesize that auditors make a greater magnitude of audit adjustments for clients headquartered in gambling-prone areas to reduce heightened audit risk. Consistent with our hypothesis, the empirical results show a positive relation between local gambling attitudes and the magnitude of audit adjustments. Further analyses show that this association is more pronounced when the regulatory cost is higher, and when the board chair or CEO comes from a gambling-prone area. We also find evidence that gambling culture results in greater magnitudes of both upward and downward audit adjustments, audit firms appoint more experienced audit partners to gambling-prone clients, and there is a fee premium for gambling-prone clients.     

盈余管理、信息风险与审计意见

盈余管理和信息风险是影响审计意见的两个重要因素。已有研究主要关注当期盈余管理与审计意见的关系,少有关注信息风险对审计意见的影响。本文运用我国上市公司的数据,同时研究盈余管理和信息风险对审计意见的影响。检验结果表明,公司的信息风险与审计师出具非标意见概率显著正相关,而当期盈余管理与审计师出具非标意见的概率无显著相关性。这表明,审计师出具审计意见时主要考虑信息风险,而没有证据表明审计师出具审计意见时考虑了盈余管理。本文的研究结论深化了已有审计意见和审计质量决定因素方面的研究。     

新旧企业所得税制度的差异比较

从2008年1月1日起,我国的企业所得税制度合二为一。新的企业所得税制度与原制度相比,在纳税人、纳税义务、税率、收入、扣除、资产的税务处理、应纳税所得额的计算、境外所得税收抵免、税收优惠和反避税管理等方面均有突出的变化,标志着新制度更具有科学性、规范性和国际性,对推进我国社会主义市场经济建设,促进改革开放和社会主义和谐社会的建立都具有深远的意义。     

审计处理、审计整改与财政收支违规行为

基于2006-2012年的审计年鉴数据,实证检验了国家审计中审计决定、审计移送和审计建议的处理与整改对于审计查出财政违规问题金额的影响.研究结果显示,无论审计署特派办还是地方审计机关,虽然独立性和隶属关系不同,但在审计处理和审计整改之间并未形成交互加强的互补关系.研究发现表明,在维护国家财经秩序和促进政府良治的过程中,国家审计的现实表现与服务国家治理、提倡审计免疫的理论要求尚存在差距,需要加强审计处理与审计整改协同机制的建设.     

Do auditors constrain intertemporal income shifting in private companies?*

This study investigates the association between private company auditing and intertemporal income shifting. Using a large reduction in the Finnish corporate tax rate as a strong incentive for income shifting and financial statement data coupled with proprietary information from the tax authorities, we analyse accruals and cost stickiness of small private companies. Our results reveal significant differences in accrual income shifting between audited and unaudited companies, but only among companies that on average could anticipate the tax reduction the most. Further, we find auditors to restrict sticky selling, general, and administrative cost behaviour that we hypothesise is associated with illegal actions. Additional tests expose a nontrivial number of incorrectly unaudited companies which are the ones mostly associated with income shifting. Taken together, our study highlights the effects of audit exemption and the importance of enforcement while also suggesting that the audit process is value adding for the tax authorities.     

税收征管权审计控制效果研究

通过实证方法对我国政府审计对税收征管权的控制效果进行检验的结果表明:我国政府审计对税收征管权的控制效果总体来说较好;主动纳税程度越高、经济越发达的地区或企业避税行为越严重,审计对其控制的效果也越好。审计机关应该加强对重点税源、经济发达地区或企业的税收征管权的控制,以防止税收征管权的进一步异化。     

Earnings Announcements,Differences of Opinion and Management Guidance

Berkman, Dimitrov, Jain, Koch, and Tice (2009) document a negative relationship between differences of opinion and earnings announcement returns, and this relationship is more pronounced when short‐sale constraints are likely to be high. These findings are interpreted as support for the theory in Miller (1977) that binding short sale constraints cause pessimists to be underrepresented in price formation. We conjecture that accounting information (i.e., earnings news) is likely to play a role in this returns pattern. After controlling for the level of earnings news, we find that the relationship between differences of opinion and stock returns is either eliminated or opposite from what is predicted by Miller's theory. Further, we present evidence that suggests the confounding effect of earnings news can be explained by (pessimistic) management earnings guidance. Our findings offer an alternative explanation for why low differences of opinion stocks earn greater abnormal returns around earnings announcements.     

Audit committee quality indices,reporting quality and firm value

We investigate the relation between audit committee (AC) quality indices, financial reporting, internal control quality and firm value using a US dataset for the period 2002–12. The indices are developed by linking firm value with principal component analysis (PCA) factors based on a broad set of 82 AC variables, some of which influence the quality of the AC, but are not addressed in prior literature. Significant AC factors include ‘overlapping directors’, ‘busyness’ and ‘foreign director’, and we use these factors to develop ‘high’ and ‘low’ AC quality indices. We show that low AC quality firms are more likely to manage earnings, be external auditor dependent with respect to non‐audit tax services, and switch to a lower quality auditor. Low AC quality firms are also more likely to have internal control concerns disclosed by predecessor auditors, including accounting issues, financial restatements, audit opinion concerns and deficiencies that undermine internal control effectiveness. Further, they are more likely to receive an audit report containing additional explanatory notes. Conversely, high AC quality firms are significantly less likely to have these concerns. Our findings highlight the value of using AC quality indices in delivering greater oversight of the financial reporting process.     

对适合我国上市公司研究的会计——税收差异计量方法探讨

会计——税收差异的计量是从会计——税收差异角度研究盈余质量和从税收监管角度研究税收庇护活动对企业纳税影响的共同难题。借鉴西方国家会计——税收差异的计量方法,结合我国企业所得税的核算和披露制度,本文认为,以财务报告数据为基础的计量方法比较适合我国目前的上市公司研究。     

国家审计与政府绩效管理

审计机关作为政府的职能部门,有义务也有责任对推进政府绩效管理作出贡献。本文在导入政府绩效管理的相关表述,强调国家审计介入政府绩效管理的意义后,从国家审计是加强和改进政府绩效管理的重要力量以及政府绩效管理为国家审计提供了深入发展的平台两个方面分析了国家审计与政府绩效管理的关系,并结合现有经验,特别是江苏推进绩效审计的实践,阐述了国家审计推进政府绩效管理的主要途径,并提出国家审计进一步推进政府绩效管理需解决的主要问题。     

美加两国税务稽查管理特色及对我国的启示

美国、加拿大两国同属发达国家,也都实行联邦制。先进的税务稽查制度对两国经济高速发展起到了明显的促进作用。本文以美国、加拿大两国为例,归纳和分析两国在税务稽查管理方面的先进经验和做法,以期对我国税务稽查的改革和完善有所裨益。     

Audit opinion improvement and the timing of disclosure

Companies have been found to report positive information more quickly than they report negative information (i.e., good news early, bad news late). This paper investigates the potential impact of audit opinion change on the timeliness of financial disclosures, with improvements in audit opinion considered to be “good news.” We take both the direction and the magnitude of audit opinion change into consideration, with magnitude measuring how far the opinion is from an unqualified opinion (i.e., an unqualified opinion with explanatory paragraph is closer to an unqualified opinion than a qualified opinion is). We find that firms experiencing an improvement in their audit opinions disclose their financial results earlier, while those with audit opinion deteriorations report their financial results later, and that these effects were related to the magnitude of the opinion change. What's more, there is an asymmetric response to good audit opinion news vs. bad audit opinion news, with bad audit opinion news having a larger effect on earnings timeliness than the effect on earnings timeliness of good audit opinion news. Overall, our results support the “good news early, bad news late” notion. Finally, we also find that overall earnings timeliness has improved in China since the enactment of new reporting regulations in 2006.     

Audit fees and audit adjustments: evidence from Welsh local authorities

This paper exploits the availability of pre-audit financial statements to investigate the scale and incidence of audit adjustments and their impact on audit fees in Welsh local authorities. Adjustments to the politically-sensitive general fund, which represent a significant proportion of all adjustments, are associated with increased audit fees. The authors also found that audit adjustments on average result in more conservative reporting of the surplus/deficit and the balance on the general fund, with the number and value of downward adjustments exceeding those of upward movements.     

会计师事务所组织形式、盈余管理与IPO折价

会计师事务所组织形式由有限责任制变为特殊普通合伙制,增加了审计师的法律责任,提高了审计的鉴证价值和保险价值,有利于审计师在 IPO 审计过程中更好地发挥信息中介作用。以保荐制下 IPO公司为样本,实证考察事务所组织形式对 IPO 盈余管理和 IPO 折价的影响。研究发现,相比有限责任制事务所,特殊普通合伙制事务所审计的发行公司的正向盈余管理水平更低,IPO 折价率也更低。研究结论表明事务所转制后,审计师加强了对发行公司盈余管理行为的约束,提高了 IPO 定价效率,监管部门推动的事务所转制对 IPO 市场具有积极治理效果。     

Audit quality and properties of analysts’ information environment

We consider how audit quality impacts sell‐side analysts’ information environment. Using the method outlined by Barron et al., we examine whether higher audit quality is associated with differences in the weight analysts place on common information relative to private information, as well as the extent to which audit quality separately impacts the precision of analysts’ private and common information. Our results show that, in instances where analysts revise their earnings forecasts for year t+1 shortly after the release of year t earnings, higher audit quality results in analysts placing more weight on public information. The precision of private (as well as public) information is improved. These results extend our understanding of how audit quality impacts on attributes of analysts’ forecasts and provides support for the argument that audit quality has important capital market implications.     

企业避税地直接投资与审计费用

以2002~2016年我国沪深A股上市公司为样本,考察企业避税地直接投资对审计费用的影响,并基于信息风险、代理风险以及法律风险等视角揭示其作用机制.研究发现:避税地直接投资显著增加了上市公司审计费用.原因在于避税地直接投资降低了上市公司信息透明度并增加了公司代理成本这提高了审计师的审计风险,进而导致了较高的审计费用.不过,避税地直接投资并不会增加企业的法律风险进而提高审计费用.进一步研究还发现,税收情报交换协定有助于缓解避税地直接投资所引发的信息风险,而良好的内部控制则有助于减轻避税地直接投资所带来的信息风险与代理风险.研究在理论上丰富了避税地直接投资经济后果及审计费用影响因素的相关文献,在实践中为进一步加强企业避税地直接投资监管提供了有益借鉴.     

The Role of Risk Management and Governance in Determining Audit Demand

Abstract:  Most prior research into audit fees has been based on a theoretical model which treats audit fees as the by-product of a production function ignoring potential demand forces that may drive the level of the audit fee. Inspired by prior 'anomalous' results, we take a different perspective by focusing on demand factors that may affect the level of the audit fee. Using data collected from a sample of listed companies in Belgium, we consider both disclosures about risk and risk management and actual decisions about corporate governance to examine whether audit fees are higher when these demand forces exist. In general, we expect that external auditing will increase in situations where there are multiple stakeholders with individual risk profiles who can shift some of the cost of monitoring to other stakeholders. Consistent with our theory and expectations, our results indicate that audit fees are higher when a company has an audit committee, discloses a relatively high level of financial risk management, and has a larger proportion of independent Board Members. Audit fees are lower when a company discloses a relatively high level of compliance risk management. The latter result indicates that controls are only complementary as long as they are voluntary, as mandated controls act as substitutes for non-mandated controls.     

新时期文明审计研究

文明审计是审计文化的重要组成部分,是审计文明的外在表现形式。文明审计是历史发展的产物,具有必然性、时代性和长期性。文明审计必须从建立责任机制、教育监督机制、约束机制和激励机制入手,树立文明审计理念和文明审计规范,促进审计干部文明审计,鼓励审计干部做文明审计模范。     

审计监督、最终控制人性质与税收激进度

新兴市场中的企业税收激进活动受到所有权性质与政府干预等转轨因素的影响。审计以特有的监督与治理功能可以有效地制约企业税收激进活动。本文主要探讨审计作为公司外部治理机制对税收激进活动具有的监督作用,以及这种监督制约作用在不同企业所有权环境下的表现差异。通过对中国A股上市公司2002—2009年相关数据进行经验研究发现,高质量外部审计可以有效制约企业税收激进活动,且这种制约作用在不同最终控制人性质企业存在显著差异,基于政治关联程度与融资约束差异,审计监督对非国有企业税收激进活动的治理效率更突出。因此,提高审计对整体税收激进的监督效率,需要强化审计对国有企业税收活动的监管。