Earnings Management and Tax Incentives
Earnings Management. Tax. Tax Incentives.
The Brazilian tax burden is one of the largest in the world. In turn, the country also shows high amount of tax incentives granted to companies. These facts, by themselves, highlight the importance that taxes have for society and for companies. Given this, firms that perform better tax planning, with a view to minimizing the effects of taxation, may have a differential compared to their competitors. The possibilities provided by the tax legislation to pay less taxes constitute one of the strands of studies on accounting choices (SOUZA ET AL., 2018). Fields, Lys and Vincent (2001) mention that company decisions can be managed with the purpose of affecting accounting numbers, and consequently the amount of taxes to be collected by companies. In this sense, this research has as its general objective to investigate if companies that are granted tax incentives show lower levels of earnings management. The research sample comprises non-financial companies listed in [B] ³ - Brazil, Bolsa, Balcão, from 2012 to 2018. Tax incentives will be collected, through content analysis, in the explanatory notes. The level of earnings management will be calculated through accruals and operating activities (PAE, 2005; ROYCHOWDHURY, 2006). Survey data will be collected through standardized financial statements filed on the CVM website. To achieve the proposed objective, a regression through Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) will be estimated.