IFRS 도입으로 인해 기업의 법인세 부담이 변하는가?- K-IFRS 조기도입기업의 사례연구 -

This case study investigates the early adopters of K-IFRS(i.e., IFRS translated into Korean) to see if corporate tax liabilities would increase under K-IFRS in any significant way as compared to those under K-GAAP. If K-IFRS led firms to assume a heavier tax burden despite economic substance remaining unchanged, the adoption of K-IFRS would weaken their competitiveness in the market. If, on the other hand, corporate tax liabilities were alleviated under K-IFRS, the national tax revenue would get squeezed, giving the government hardship. Accordingly, the potential changes in corporate tax liabilities have recently become of great concern to the Korean tax authority and the firms planning to adopt K-IFRS, let alone the academic researchers. Among those firms who voluntarily chose to adopt K-IFRS in 2009, this case study examines 12 firms whose notes to the audit reports are publicly available. These 12 sample firms are divided into firms with net income(profit firms) and firms with net losses(loss firms). The firms who adopted K-IFRS in 2009 were required by the authority to restate the 2008 financial statements using K-IFRS, and to disclose the reconciliation of the differences between the two sets of the accounting standards. Thus, the analysis of the 2009 financial statements and notes of the early adopters will enable us to reveal the differential impacts on financial positions and performances, and the reasons thereof by scrutinizing the two sets of financial statements. This amounts to a direct comparison of financial and tax consequences caused by the two different sets of accounting standards, allowing us to conduct an archival analysis in an ideal experimental setting. The main results of this study are as follows: First, the tax liability of those 12 early adopters would be reduced, on average, by 761,327 KRW (-3.08% in percentage) had K-IFRS been adopted in 2008. Even if we exclude the one firm with an exceptionally large decrease in tax liability, a similar result (i.e., decrease in corporate taxes) is obtained for the remaining 11 firms. Further, a similar result is also found when the 9 profit firms alone are separately examined. Secondly, while the profit firms' tax burden declines, that of the loss firms increases. But the absolute monetary amount of the increase in the loss firms' tax burden is rather small, even though the increase rate of the tax burden is relatively large because the loss firms' tax liability in absolute amount is very small under K-GAAP. The results of this case study cannot be generalized because of the small sample size. However, it could be interpreted as a signal that the adoption of K-IFRS might have insignificant impacts on corporate tax burden at least for some firms.