Earnings,institutional investors,tax avoidance,and firm value: Evidence from Taiwan

This study examines the valuation of earnings from China and Taiwan by foreign and domestic institutional investors across a sample of Taiwanese electronics firms. We further compare the valuation of firm earnings reported in tax havens and non-tax havens, and whether these firms have changed tax avoidance activities since 2004 when the Taiwanese government enacted stricter auditing of transfer pricing regulation.Our findings show that both operating income from the home country and investment income are positively associated with firm value. Operating income from China, however, is not significantly related to firm value when institutional ownership of the firm exceeds fifty percent. This result indicates that operating income is valued differently, depending on the location from which the income was generated. Non-operating income enhances firm value regardless of the revenue source. We also report that foreign institutional investors favor operating income from domestic and investment sources over earnings generated from non-domestic sources and other non-operating income. Furthermore, our results suggest that firms rearrange reported profits from subsidiaries located in tax havens to affiliates in other countries following the transfer pricing audit guide Taiwan implemented in 2004. Results also indicate firms may have been shifting profits to other low-tax-rate countries, or to countries which do not require firms to pay taxes, even if they are not doing business in that country.     

Impact of Earnings,Dividends and Cash Flows on Stock Returns: Case of Taiwan's Stock Market

The study uses Taiwan's stock market, a newly developed market with different characteristics from that of the U.S., as an experimental case to examine the influences of the market's characteristics on the relationship between stock returns and fundamental accounting information, such as earnings, dividends and cash flows. The testing period is from 1990 to 1994, right after the promulgation of Taiwan's accounting standard for statement of cash flows in 1989.Similar to the findings of U.S. studies, the study shows that earnings data is key information for investors. Unlike the U.S. results, however, both operating income and non-operating income are positively related to stock returns. The usefulness of non-operating income to explain stock returns is due mainly to its recurrent characteristic in Taiwan. The market views non-operating income, mostly from disposal of real-estate and short-term equity investments, as a complementary factor to operating income. It is a possible common phenomenon in a booming economy. Unlike from the results of U.S. studies, Taiwan's stock returns are strongly associated with stock dividends. Cash dividends, however, are relatively less important information to the market. The fast booming economy as well as Taiwan's free tax rate on capital gains are the explanations for the different findings. The results also support McNicholes and Dravid's (1990) and etc. results that stock dividends may act as a signal for favorable future earnings. Examining the association between stock returns and cash flow information, the results indicate that stock returns are positively associated with cash flows from both operating and financing activities. The phenomenon implies that the market appreciates not only the cash inflows from operating activities, but also cash inflows from new issues of bonds or stocks for further expansion. It is consistent to Taiwan's booming economy. The finding also supports Ross (1977) and Leland and Pyles' (1977) signaling hypothesis.The study concludes that the relationships between stock returns and fundamental variables are subject to the market's characteristics. The case of the Taiwan stock market shows that usefulness of accounting information depends upon the different roles of the information in the tested market. The results of the study also indicate that directly applying the U.S. experiences without any adjustment may cause incorrect conclusions for empirical studies.     

Comparing the Value Relevance of Two Operating Income Measures

Prior research has shown that pro-forma (recurring operating) earnings reported by managers and analysts are more value relevant than GAAP net income. Since GAAP net income contains many non-operating items that reduce its value relevance compared to operating earnings, comparing the value relevance of GAAP net income with operating earnings unduly favors operating earnings. We show that operating earnings reported by managers and analysts are more value relevant than a measure of operating earnings derived from firms' financial statements, as reported by Standard and Poor's. Our evidence is important because it indicates that operating earnings reported by managers and analysts contain value relevant information beyond that provided by operating earnings obtained by sophisticated users from firms' financial statements.     

Earnings management using classification shifting of revenues

This paper examines a novel form of classification shifting as an earnings management tool using a sample of 12,804 UK listed firm-year observations for the 1995–2014 period. It proposes a new approach to classification shifting whereby firms have scope to misclassify revenues from non-operating activities as operating revenues. The results establish that firms engage in classification shifting of non-operating revenues to inflate operating revenues. They indicate that firms in the period following mandatory IFRS adoption are associated with an increase in this practice, consistent with IFRS offering greater scope for manipulation. Further tests reveal that classification shifting of revenues is more pervasive for firms that report operating losses or have low growth.     

Where do firms manage earnings?

Despite decades of research on how, why, and when companies manage earnings, there is a paucity of evidence about the geographic location of earnings management within multinational firms. In this study, we examine where companies manage earnings using a sample of 2,067 U.S. multinational firms from 1994 to 2009. We predict and find that firms with extensive foreign operations in weak rule of law countries have more foreign earnings management than companies with subsidiaries in locations where the rule of law is strong. We also find some evidence that profitable firms with extensive tax haven subsidiaries manage earnings more than other firms and that the earnings management is concentrated in foreign income. Apart from these results, we find that most earnings management takes place in domestic income, not foreign income.     

Do investors overreact to earnings warnings?

This study shows that contrary to what many managers argue, there is no overreaction to earnings warnings. Our sample consists of 986 firms that had significantly lower fourth-quarter earnings than analysts' forecasts during the period of 1983 to 1998. About 9% of these firms released quantitative earnings information while 6.5% of the firms disclosed qualitative earnings information prior to the formal earnings report dates. We find that although these firms experience significant stock price declines during the warning period, their share prices are still higher than the economic values, calculated using Ohlson's residual income model. Further, long-run operating and stock performance of these firms are not more positive than the performance of firms that do not warn. We also find that investor reaction to both warning and non-warning firms is positively related to the firms' long-run stock and operating performance. These findings support the argument that investors do not overreact to the warnings but base their reaction on anticipated long-term performance of the firms.     

Sources of earnings variability and their effect on earnings forecasts

Previous research shows that analysts’ forecasts of earnings do not fully incorporate information contained in reported earnings variability. This study investigates whether the inefficient forecast is because of a failure to incorporate observable information on two components of earnings variability: variability in operating performance and income smoothing. Our results show that analysts’ forecasts fully incorporate information contained in earnings variability for firms with high income smoothing and for firms with low operating variability. A smaller serial correlation of forecast errors is observed for firms with low operating variability, which suggests that analysts recognize the permanence in earnings for such firms.     

Does an item change trigger earnings management? Evidence from asset disposal income in China

We explore a unique regulatory change in 2017 in China that requires firms to move the non-current assets disposal income in the income statement from below the line of operating income to above it. We find that firms that have incentives to avoid losses conduct upward earnings management using the non-current assets disposal income after the regulatory change. We also find that this earnings management behaviour is more pronounced for firms in the growth and decline stages, and for firms with weak market competition power. In addition, such behaviour damages firm’s operating performance and innovation in the next year.     

Market valuations of bargain purchase gains: are these true gains under IFRS?

This study investigates stock market valuations for bargain purchase gains (BPGs) in the context of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) between 2005 and 2014. Motivated by the increased frequency and high concentration of BPGs in Europe, we study a sample of acquirers listed on the London Stock Exchange to assess the value relevance of BPGs (a) under discrepant disclosure practices (i.e. disclosure versus non- disclosure of the reasons for the gains), (b) before and after the revision of IFRS 3, and (c) considering different income classifications for BPGs (operating or non-operating earnings). BPGs, on average, are not significantly valued by the stock market. However, the post-IFRS 3 revision period, marked by stricter measurement criteria and additional disclosure requirements, witnessed a significant shift in firm valuations. BPGs for which the reason for the gain is disclosed are positively valued only in the post-IFRS 3 revision period. BPGs are consistently perceived as value irrelevant for those firms which fail to comply with mandated IFRS 3 disclosure requirements regarding the reason for the gain. Finally, BPGs classified as a component of non-operating income with sufficient note disclosure on the reason for the gain are significantly associated with prices and returns.     

Environmental uncertainty and the market pricing of earnings smoothness

Environmental uncertainty induces variability in an organization's reported earnings, and accentuates the information asymmetry between its managers and outside stakeholders. Managers operating in an environment of high uncertainty, therefore, have an incentive to reduce such variability by smoothing income numbers. We investigate the stock market response to earnings smoothness for firms operating in an environment of high uncertainty. We measure income smoothing by the negative correlation of a firm's change in discretionary accruals with its change in pre-managed earnings as per Tucker and Zarowin (2006). Using future earnings response coefficient (FERC) methodology to measure the informativeness of smoothed earnings, and two measures of environmental uncertainty, this paper documents that current stock price incorporates more information about future earnings for firms operating in high uncertain environments, thus supporting the informational value view of income smoothing.     

The Effect of Volume of Intrafirm Transfers on Market Metrics

In this paper, we examine the relationship between international intrafirm area transfers and market metrics as measured by market-to-book value and systematic risk. Intrafirm transfers – the amount that multinational corporations charge one another for the transfer of goods, intellectual property, and services – have become an increasingly important issue for policymaking, managerial, financial, and tax purposes. This paper also examines whether international intrafirm intergeographic area transfers are attributed to corporate tax. We find that firms with a sizable volume of international intrafirm transfers have higher systematic risk than comparable firms without these transfers. We show cross-sectionally that firms engage in international transfers have a higher market-to-book ratio, suggesting that transfers add value through their effect on earnings and taxes. Consistent with Mills and Newberry (2003) and Collins, Kemsley, and Lang (1998), we document that U.S. (global) income tax is positively (negatively) related to intrafirm transfers, implying that U.S. multinational firms shifted taxable income to the United States from 1995 to 1999.     

Voluntary disclosure of operating income

This study investigates whether New Zealand firms’ voluntary disclosure of operating income, which is also known as earnings before interest and tax, in the income statement is related to the investment opportunity set. New Zealand provides an ideal setting to examine this because New Zealand generally accepted accounting principles do not require the disclosure of operating income as an intermediate income number in arriving at net income (earnings) in the income statement. We hypothesize and find evidence that firms with high assets‐in‐place and high leverage are more likely to voluntarily disclose operating income/earnings before interest and tax. However, the assets‐in‐place finding is sensitive to alternative measures of the investment opportunity set.     

On the Usefulness of Operating Income,Net Income and Comprehensive Income in Explaining Security Returns

This study evaluates the usefulness of three earnings definitions (operating income, net income and comprehensive income) in explaining residual security returns. Usefulness is measured in terms of relative information content and incremental information content. In the former, the goodness-of-fit of the return-earnings relationship is compared under each earnings definition. In the latter, the increase in goodness-of-fit due to additional earnings components is measured. Based on a sample that averages 922 firms a year for 18 years, the analysis shows that operating income weakly dominates net income, and that both operating income and net income dominate comprehensive income, in information content. The results also show that those items that account for the difference between net income and operating income have incremental information content, but not those between net income and comprehensive income. The practical and academic contributions of these findings are discussed.     

Asset write-offs discretion and accruals management in Taiwan: the role of corporate governance

Using a sample of Taiwan’s public firms, this paper examines whether managers use discretionary write-offs and abnormal accruals jointly to reach earnings targets and how corporate governance mechanisms react to such opportunistic behavior. We develop a set of simultaneous equations that capture executives’ incentives to manage earnings through write-offs and accrual management. These incentives include the existence and tightness of accounting-based covenants, “big bath,” income smoothing, and changes in senior management. The empirical results show that firms with larger discretionary write-offs also have lower discretionary accruals. In addition, we find that these earnings management tools are endogenous, suggesting that discretionary write-offs and discretionary accruals are partial complements for earnings manipulation and that their magnitudes are determined jointly. These findings contrast sharply with the tenor of discussion in the U.S. literature concerning the potential for using asset write-offs and discretionary accruals to manipulate earnings, which documents that managers use their discretion over accruals to signal economic realities rather than to obfuscate. Moreover, the results reveal that the empirical association between discretionary write-offs and abnormal accruals is more pronounced in weakly governed firms, suggesting that a strong governance setting is likely to constrain management’s discretionary behavior. The above implications are robust to a number of alternative specifications and variables definitions.     

The Treatment of Non-Recurring Items in the Income Statement and their Consistency with FASB Concept Statements

This study provides evidence on the consistency of Accounting Principles Board Statement No. 30 (APB, 1973) classification criteria with the objectives of the Financial Accounting Standards Board's Concept Statements Nos 1 and 2 (FASB, 1978, 1980). It is hypothesized that the current APB 30 requirement to classify items of a non-recurring nature in the operating section of the income statement decreases the predictive ability of income before extraordinary items. A random sample of 50 firms with non-recurring adjustments to income, which were included in the operating section of the income statement, was selected from Standard and Poor's Corporation Records. Naive models were used to generate earnings per share forecasts for the year in which the adjustment to income occurred, the prior year and subsequent year.
The results indicate a statistically significant decrease in the predictive ability of earnings per share before extraordinary items associated with the year that the adjustment occurred and a significant increase in the variability of earnings per share. Also, differences in predictive ability were noted between small and large firms and firms with positive and negative adjustments to income.
The results of this study also imply that the managers of most firms with negative adjustments to income are not using the adjustments to smooth income for either the purpose of decreasing the variability of earnings or increasing predictability. The results are more consistent with the 'big bath' theory. These conclusions appear to be more relevant for smaller firms than larger firms.     

Using Financial Accounting Data to Examine the Effect of Foreign Operations Located in Tax Havens and Other Countries on U.S. Multinational Firms' Tax Rates

This paper investigates the effect tax havens and other foreign jurisdictions have on the income tax rates of multinational firms based in the United States. We develop a new regression methodology using financial accounting data to estimate the average worldwide, federal, and foreign tax rates on worldwide, federal, and foreign pretax book income for a large sample of U.S. firms with and without tax haven operations. We find that on average U.S. firms that disclosed material operations in at least one tax haven country have a worldwide tax burden on worldwide income that is approximately 1.5 percentage points lower than firms without operations in at least one tax haven country. Our results also show that U.S. firms face a 4.4% current federal tax rate on foreign income whether or not they have tax haven operations. Finally, we find that U.S. firms with operations in some tax haven countries have higher federal tax rates on foreign income than other firms. This result suggests that in some cases, tax haven operations may increase U.S. tax collections at the expense of foreign country tax collections.     

Non‐operating earnings and firm risk*

We find that non‐operating earnings reduce total earnings volatility, stock price volatility, idiosyncratic risk, and crash risk. The risk‐reducing effects of non‐operating earnings are higher than those of operating earnings for risk measures based on stock market data. Non‐operating earnings serve to mitigate risks among firms with operating losses, high financial leverage, high growth uncertainty, and low‐ability managers.     

Credit Ratings and Earnings Management around IPOs

This study examines the impact of having a credit rating on earnings management (EM) through accruals and real activities manipulation by initial public offering (IPO) firms. We find that firms going public with a credit rating are less likely to engage in income‐enhancing accrual‐based and real EM in the offering year. The monitoring by a credit rating agency (CRA) and the reduced information asymmetry due to the provision of a credit rating disincentivise rated issuers from managing earnings. We also suggest that the participation of a reputable auditing firm is crucial for CRAs to effectively restrain EM. Moreover, we document that for unrated issuers, at‐issue income‐increasing EM is not linked to future earnings and is negatively related to post‐issue long‐run stock performance. However, for rated issuers, at‐issue income‐increasing EM is positively associated with subsequent accounting performance and is unrelated to long‐run stock performance following the offering. The evidence indicates that managers in unrated firms generally manipulate earnings to mislead investors, while managers in rated firms tend to exercise their accounting and operating discretion for informative purposes.     

Stock market listing status and real earnings management

This study analyzes real earnings management among privately held versus publicly listed firms. Our first finding is that public firms engage in more earnings management through operating activities. When a clear incentive to manage earnings in a specific direction is present we continue to find that public firms manage their earnings more than private firms. We reason that capital market pressure and ownership characteristics drive our results. Additional analyses reveal that public firms employ more real earnings management as a proportion of the total earnings management strategy. Furthermore, we find that mitigating factors of real earnings management have stronger impact in public firms. This study contributes to literature on non-accrual earnings management and to the broader understanding about the private vis-à-vis public firm reporting and operating behavior. Finally, we contribute by identifying an important societal cost of stock market listing, which is the increase in potentially value-destroying real earnings management.     

Heaping in Reported Earnings: Evidence from Monthly Financial Reports of Taiwanese Firms

Heaping is a phenomenon in which reported numbers tend to appear in increments that are important for cultural or other reasons. This study reports that heaping is present in monthly earnings reports for publicly listed companies in Taiwan. We find that Taiwanese firms tend to report monthly earnings in increments of 5 in the first two places (digits) of the earnings numbers. Furthermore, we observe predominantly more zeros in the third through fifth places of monthly earnings numbers, suggesting that monthly earnings tend to be reported in increments of 10 in the first three, first four, and first five places. Reporting of monthly earnings in Taiwan is discretionary, and our findings suggest that managers of Taiwanese firms are susceptible to heuristic bias when reporting monthly earnings. These findings complement studies on heaping in U.S. financial markets documenting that managers and financial analysts tend to make earnings per share estimates that heap in increments of nickels.