Journal of International Accounting Auditing and Taxation最新文献

Interactions between auditors and client management affect audit quality on an engagement because those interactions influence and incentivize auditor behavior and decision-making. I perform an experiment using 191 management participants to investigate (1) whether an auditor’s use of professional judgment or industry norms to justify proposed adjustments increases management’s evaluation of audit quality, and (2) whether these evaluations differ under principles-based or rules-based standards. I find that, although management views industry norms to be more credible, they disregard an auditor’s justification method and evaluate audit quality based on underlying accounting attributes when reporting under a more rules-based standard, such as US GAAP. However, when an accounting standard is more principles-based, such as IFRS, using industry norms positively influences perceptions of audit quality. Thus, when standards are less precise, auditors are incentivized to engage in herding behavior by defaulting to industry norms when determining appropriate accounting treatments. This study increases our understanding of the incentives and motivations faced by auditors in their interactions with client management under both rules-based and principle-based accounting standards.

Bilateral tax treaties are an integral part of the international tax system. Despite this, the accounting literature on tax treaties is almost non-existent, with the majority of the research being done in the public finance and tax law research fields. The goal of this paper is to spur interest among accounting and tax researchers to engage with this literature. In this paper, we suggest that there are several areas in which accounting researchers are well positioned to contribute to the tax treaty literature. We survey the existing tax treaty literature in accounting, public finance, and tax law, and we identify new opportunities for accounting researchers. These opportunities span a broad range of research methods including archival, behavioral and experimental, interpretive, and tax legal research. Perhaps most importantly, we suggest that the contributions that accounting researchers can make to the tax treaty literature may have meaningful impacts not only on the academic world but also on tax policy making and practice.

We conduct a literature review of 60 studies on the impact of book-tax conformity on earnings management. We review this relationship in public firms, and then in public versus private firms. We also review external factors that may affect this relationship, such as accounting standards changes/International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) adoption, tax law changes, tax enforcement, and external audits. Finally, we review the studies on book-tax conformity and earnings attributes. The results are inconclusive as to whether high book-tax conformity increases or decreases earnings management. We find that private firms manage earnings and taxes to a greater extent than public firms when book-tax conformity is strong and that IFRS adoption is not enough to reduce earnings management and increase tax compliance. Firms use negative discretionary accruals before tax rate reductions to achieve their tax planning goals. Finally, tax authority enforcement strengthens financial reporting quality and decreases tax avoidance, whereas stronger book-tax conformity reduces the information content and timeliness of accounting earnings. Based on our review, we provide suggestions for future research.

This study investigates the initial impact of International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) 15 by comparing the financial statement comparability of the effective years of its implementation with those of the pre-IFRS 15 periods. Given that private firms are exempt from the IFRS 15 amendment, we use them as the control group for public firms. Specifically, we use Korean firms from 2015 to 2020 and employ a difference-in-differences approach. This study finds an increase in financial statement comparability for public firms after the IFRS 15 application relative to the change of private firms that are not subject to the IFRS 15. We interpret that the enhancement in financial statement comparability is caused by the following two aspects of IFRS 15: discretion reduction effect and harmonization of multiple standards effect. Furthermore, an increase in comparability is greater for firms that are clients of industry-specialist auditors and those that operate in less-competitive industries, unlike their counterparts. We also find that discretionary revenues are lower in the post-IFRS 15 period than in the pre-IFRS 15 period. Overall, the results of this study suggest that IFRS 15 can deliver the outcomes aimed for by regulators, at least during its initial implementation.

This study examines whether and how a country’s implementation of corporate governance reforms affects the propensity and properties of management earnings forecasts. We propose competing hypotheses that the implementation of corporate governance reforms will either increase or reduce the likelihood of management earnings forecasts. Our sample includes public firms from 22 countries spanning from 2004 to 2009. Using a difference-in-differences (DID) research design and logistic regressions, we compare the change in earnings forecast practices between firms domiciled in countries that implemented corporate governance reforms and firms domiciled in countries that did not. We find that the implementation of corporate governance reforms in a country increases the propensity of firms in that country to issue earnings forecasts. However, the implementation of corporate governance reforms in a country does not significantly influence the quality of earnings forecasts issued in the post-reform period. Also, the effect of reforms on the level of earnings forecasts issued by firms is greater for countries adopting the comply-or-explain type of reform, for firms in countries with a weaker level of pre-reform corporate governance, and for countries with a common law legal origin. Overall, our findings shed light on how strengthened corporate governance affects firms’ voluntary disclosure practices.

This study examines whether corporate tax information from non-financial disclosure is material for investors. This is important because, recently, the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) enacted, and the European Union (EU) passed, new non-financial tax disclosure requirements. By conducting a factorial survey experiment, we are the first to show that non-professional investors are more likely to invest in companies providing detailed public country-by-country-reporting (CbCR) than in those that do not. We conclude that a public CbCR – as required by the GRI and the EU – is material for (non-professional) investors. Additional analyses show that the effect of the public CbCR is stronger (i) for socially responsible investors and (ii) for investors with high tax morale. In contrast to providing public CbCR, we find no evidence that reporting the corporate tax strategy (CTS) – as solely required by the GRI – affects investment decisions. Our findings provide novel insights into whether and how different types of investors integrate different kinds of non-financial tax disclosure in their decision-making processes. For this reason, our study at the intersection of corporate taxation, reporting, and sustainability provides implications for scholars, corporate decision-makers, policy-makers, and standard setters.

Timeliness is an essential factor for the relevance of financial reporting information. However, the role of corporate governance in influencing financial reporting is largely unknown. This study is the first to investigate whether board composition influences the timeliness of financial reporting in private firms. Using a sample of 8,095 Swedish companies, I find that more independent, gender diverse, and larger boards tend to file their accounts in a timely fashion. These findings suggest that board composition considerably influences reporting behavior in private companies.

In recent years, accounting scholars have shown growing interest in utilizing social media (SM) for research. Using a structured literature review of 86 articles, this study aims to reconcile insights from diverse literature to understand the current trends in SM accounting research and propose an agenda for future studies. Our findings reveal that SM accounting research is still at an early stage despite the increase of articles in recent years. In particular, we find that most studies focus on (publicly listed) corporate use of SM (mostly Twitter and Facebook) to disseminate financial and non-financial information in the North American and European regions. However, there is still a limited understanding of how SM interactions among various parties may push for greater transparency in different forms of organizations and in countries where stakeholder interests are less protected. While SM studies use system-oriented (such as institutional, legitimacy, and stakeholder theories) and economic-based theories, most studies only use SM as an empirical platform and rely on empirically developed arguments without reference to explicit theories. Finally, we identify common research themes and suggest promising avenues for future accounting research.