발생액 구성요소가 회계이익과 세무이익의 정보효과에 미치는 영향

We explore the information content of taxable and book income affected by accruals management for tax planning and financial reporting purposes. Unlike previous studies, we do not assume that discretionary accruals are only used to manage book income and that taxable income excludes the discretionary components of accruals. Instead, we accept that managements accomplish their tax planning and financial reporting objectives by adjusting components of discretionary accruals; book-tax accruals and book-only accruals. Thus, the level of firms' strategies with regard to tax planning and financial reporting is assessed by estimating the change in book-tax and book-only accruals, respectively. We find that the information content of taxable income decreases when the level of downward management on book-tax accruals is high and that the information content of book income decreases when the level of upward management on book-only accruals is high. Our results support that accruals management for tax planning obscures the informativeness of taxable income and that accruals management for financial reporting purposes distort the quality of book income in Korea, where book-tax conformity is high. In addition, firms have different incentives in reporting book and taxable income. Debt ratio is one of the important corporate characteristics that affect the different incentives in reporting book and taxable income. While firms with high debt ratios have incentives to manage book income upward to avoid debt covenants violations, firms with low debt ratios have incentives to decrease tax costs through non-debt tax shields such as accounting choices because they do not enjoy enough tax deduction benefit from debt financing. Therefore, for firms with high debt ratios, we hypothesize that market participants will react more negatively to management of book income than to that of taxable income. In contrast, for firms with low debt ratios, market participants will react more negatively to the management of taxable income than to that of book income. We find that for firms with high debt ratios, decrease in information content of book income associated with the level of upward management on book-only accruals is salient. On the other hand, for firms with low debt ratio, decrease in the information content of taxable income associated with the level of downward management on book-tax accruals is salient. This study makes the following contributions to the literature. First, we address the association between accruals management for tax planning and the information content of taxable income in Korea. In Korea, where tax laws are closely linked with financial reporting rules and aggressive tax avoidance is strictly restricted, it is highly likely that managements will attempt to reduce tax costs through accounting choices in a much earlier steps than in U.S. Specifically, if accruals available for managerial discretion allow a reduction in taxable income, firms can accomplish their tax planning goals through accruals management without drawing too much attention from the National Tax Service (NTS). Previous studies using Korean firms do not find the empirical evidence that information content of taxable income is enhanced or impaired by firms' book income quality or tax planning because they do not consider such accruals management for tax planning. Therefore, our findings suggest that decomposing discretionary accruals for tax planning and financial reporting purposes is important in assessing the information content of taxable and book income especially when book-tax conformity is high. Such decomposition is not as critical in U.S since tax avoidance vehicles are not so much included in accruals. Second, previous studies commonly use discretionary accruals estimated by modified Jones model as a measure for book income management. The effective tax rate (or cash effective tax rate) suggested by Dyreng et al. (2008) and tax avoidance measure by Desai and Dharmapala (2006) are also commonly used as measures for tax planning. However, a common problem with the above measures is that they do not distinguish between book-only accruals and book-tax accruals. Discretionary accruals can not control for the effect of book-tax accruals management for tax planning while ETR (or cash ETR) and Desai's measure can not control for the effect of book-only accruals management for financial reporting purposes. Our study suggests a possibility that book-only accruals and book-tax accruals can be more precise measures for estimating the level of book income management and tax planning as we empirically use both measures in the same regression equations for the test of book and taxable income.