Last-Chance Earnings Management: Using the Tax Expense to Meet Analysts' Forecasts

We assert that the tax expense is a powerful context in which to study earnings management, because it is one of the last accounts closed prior to earnings announcements. Although many pre‐tax accruals must be posted in the year‐end general ledger, managers estimate and negotiate tax expense with th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Contemporary accounting research 2004-06, Vol.21 (2), p.431-459
Main Authors: DHALIWAL, DAN S., GLEASON, CRISTI A., MILLS, LILLIAN F.
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Accounting
Accounting research
Analysts
Corporate taxes
Earnings
Earnings management
Earnings per share
Financial management
Financial statements
Forecasts
Hypotheses
Incentives
Management
Stockholders
Studies
Target earnings
Tax expense
Tax planning
Tax rates
Taxes
Valuation
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Summary:We assert that the tax expense is a powerful context in which to study earnings management, because it is one of the last accounts closed prior to earnings announcements. Although many pre‐tax accruals must be posted in the year‐end general ledger, managers estimate and negotiate tax expense with their auditors immediately prior to earnings announcements. We hypothesize that changes from third‐ to fourth‐quarter effective tax rates (ETRs) are negatively related to whether and how much a firm's earnings absent tax expense management miss analysts' consensus forecast, a proxy for target earnings. We measure earnings absent tax expense management as actual pre‐tax earnings adjusted for the annual ETR reported at the third quarter. We provide robust evidence that firms lower their projected ETRs when they miss the consensus forecast, which is consistent with firms decreasing their tax expense if non‐tax sources of earnings management are insufficient to achieve targets. We also find that firms that exceed earnings targets increase their ETR, but this effect is less significant. By studying the tax expense in total, rather than narrow components of deferred tax expense, our results provide general evidence that reported taxes are used to manage earnings.
ISSN:0823-9150
1911-3846
DOI:10.1506/TFVV-UYT1-NNYT-1YFH