Does accounting for taxes on income provide information about tax planning performance? Evidence from German multinationals

Michael Overesch and Ulrich Schreiber

No 06-072, ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research

Abstract: This paper investigates the quality of information on tax planning performance which is provided by financial accounting based on IAS 12 (Income taxes). A simple theoretical investment model is used to show that reported tax expenses can be misleading as an indicator of tax planning performance, since timing effects of tax depreciations are suppressed. However, it is shown that IAS 12 provides meaningful information if tax planning strategies are driven by statutory tax rate differences, e.g. in the case of profit shifting. Our empirical analysis of actual tax planning behaviour, based on a panel of German balance sheet data, suggests that in practice international tax planning is significantly driven by statutory tax rates. However, we find that tax depreciation impacts on the size of investment as well and thus, IAS 12 does not fully disclose tax planning performance.

Keywords: International Taxation; Financial Accounting; Income Taxes; Firm-level Data (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2006
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-acc and nep-pbe
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.econstor.eu/bitstream/10419/24564/1/dp06072.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zbw:zewdip:5500

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in ZEW Discussion Papers from ZEW - Leibniz Centre for European Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics ().