손상차손이 이익조정과 조세부담에 미치는 영향

Abstract

If the recoverable amounts of tangible and intangible assets held by the company is lower than the book value, an impairment loss is recognized and net income is reduced. Managers are incentivized to adjust profits for reasons such as earnings smoothing, maintaining debt contracts, and maintaining the managerial position. This study is to verify whether earnings adjustment is adjusted upward or downward when a relatively high impairment loss compared to the industry average occurs. In particular, it is to verify whether the debt ratio and the size of cash flows from operating activities affect upward or downward profit adjustment. In the additional verification, we analyzed whether the corporate tax burden is also adjusted when earnings are adjusted with impairment losses. Between 2012 and 2021, Database TS-2000 and KIS_VALUE did not belong to the financial industry among companies that could collect financial data from the database, and performed single variable analysis and multiple regression analysis through 16,800 firm-year samples. As a result of the study, it was found that companies that recognized impairment losses more than the average of the same industry adjust their profits as the debt ratio increases. It was found that in the case of excessive impairment loss, there is a tendency to reduce this risk through upward earnings management whenever possible, since there is a factor of early repayment pressure from creditors or an increase in interest rates if there is a large amount of debt. We found that companies with higher impairment losses than the industry average have lower earnings estimates as cash flow from operating activities increases. It was found that when cash is abundant, managers can pursue a big-bath strategy because the pressure to repay debts is low. In addition, it was found that companies that recognized more impairment losses than the industry average did not implement tax avoidance strategies even though they adjusted earnings. It can be seen as a different contribution from previous studies in that it is revealed that managers adjust profits by recognizing higher-than-average damage losses by industry, not the degree of damage losses in all industries. It also implies that when managers of companies with higher impairment losses than the industry average perform earnings management, they can adjust earnings differently depending on the characteristics of individual companies. If a company with a high debt ratio recognizes excessive impairment losses, the company’s earnings may be overestimated. Since the profit of a company with good cash flow from operating activities can be underestimated, it provides contributions to making investment decisions in consideration of the quality of profits according to the characteristics of the company.