Tax Loss Offset Restrictions - Last Resort for the Treasury? An Empirical Evaluation of Tax Loss Offset Restrictions Based on Micro Data

In Germany, the tax loss carry-forward of corporations significantly increased over the last decade. At the same time only a small percentage of losses have been effectively offset in the following periods. One potential reason for this puzzle is that stricter loss offset restrictions have been introduced in recent years. I use a newly developed micro simulation model for the corporate sector in Germany to evaluate the fiscal effects of these restrictions. Additionally, distributional breakdowns concerning the amounts of tax loss carry-forward and the effects of loss offset restrictions are provided. I find that the restrictions on the use of tax loss carryback are rather ineffective while the newly introduced minimum taxation considerably increases yearly tax revenue by 1.1 billion

International Financial Reporting Standards and Earnings Quality: The Myth of Voluntary vs. Mandatory Adoption

We revisit evidence whether incentives or IFRS drive earnings quality changes, analyzing a large sample of German firms in the period from 1998 to 2008. Consistent with previous studies we find that voluntary and mandatory adopters differ distinctively in terms of essential firm characteristics and that size, leverage, age, bank ownership and ownership concentration influenced the decision to voluntarily adopt IFRS. However, regardless of the decision to voluntarily adopt IFRS, we find that conditional conservatism increased under IFRS for both groups of adopters, while evidence does not suggest an increase in value relevance under IFRS. Results on earnings management in the post-adoption period are mixed. While income smoothing decreases for voluntary but not for mandatory adopters, discretionary accruals only decrease for mandatory but not for voluntary adopters. However, further analyses suggest that the capital market environment and the economic cycle during the adoption period seem to be a more powerful explanation for this evidence than voluntary or mandatory IFRS adoption. Therefore, we conclude that incentives to voluntarily adopt IFRS did not unambiguously dominate accounting standards in determining earnings quality in the case of German firms

The Role of Information and Financial Reporting in Corporate Governance and Debt Contracting

We review recent literature on the role of financial reporting transparency in reducing governance-related agency conflicts among managers, directors, and shareholders, as well as in reducing agency conflicts between shareholders and creditors, and offer researchers some suggested avenues for future research. Key themes include the endogenous nature of debt contracts and governance mechanisms with respect to information asymmetry between contracting parties, the heterogeneous nature of the informational demands of contracting parties, and the heterogeneous nature of the resulting governance and debt contracts. We also emphasize the role of a commitment to financial reporting transparency in facilitating informal multiperiod contracts among managers, directors, shareholders, and creditors

Management Forecast Credibility and Underreaction to News

In this paper, we first document evidence of underreaction to management forecast news. We then hypothesize that the credibility of the forecast influences the magnitude of this underreaction. Relying on evidence that more credible forecasts are associated with a larger reaction in the short window around the management forecasts and a smaller post-management forecast drift in returns, we show that the magnitude of the underreaction is smaller for firms that provide more credible forecasts. Our paper contributes to the literature by providing out-of-sample evidence of the drift in returns documented in the post-earnings-announcement drift literature, with the credibility of the news being one explanation for the phenomenon.Sloan School of ManagementWharton SchoolDeloitte Foundatio