국제회계기준 도입 이후 현금흐름표상 이자지급액을 재무활동으로 분류하는 기업의 특징

While the previous Korean accounting standards require interest paid to be classified as operating cash flows on cash flow statements, the Korean International Financial Reporting Standards(K-IFRS) allow it to be either as operating cash flows or financing cash flows. Interest paid classified as operating cash flows decrease cash flows from operations, whereas interest paid classified as financing cash flows increase cash flows from operations as much. This study predicts that the companies that classify interest paid as financing cash flows on cash flow statements have relatively worse financial positions and financial performance and tests specific hypotheses using Korean listed companies. The analysis using the companies listed in the Korea Stock Exchange, show that the companies that have a higher 5-year average debt ratio, lower 5-year average return on sales, and a bigger firm size and early K-IFRS adopters are more likely to classify interest paid as financing cash flows. This result is consistent with the prediction that the companies that increase operating cash flows by classifying interest paid as financing cash flows have worse financial positions and financial performance. However, this result does not hold for the sample of KOSDAQ (Korea Securities Dealers Automated Quotation) companies, in which the only variable that affects the classification of interest paid is the five-year average rate of interest expenses in the absolute value of operating cash flows. Finally, we document that whether or not an auditor is one of the Big 4 audit firms affects the classification decision of interest paid and that the rate of classifying interest paid as financing cash flows differs by auditor with the Big 4.