For tax purposes, Belgium allows companies to take into account an NID on their equity. This regime enables companies to tax corporate profits in Belgian finance companies virtually for free. This case study presents in a first step how such finance companies can be set up. Then, using a unique...

Two separate streams of research find evidence that firms decrease Ramp;D spending to meet earnings benchmarks and that the Ramp;D tax credit increases Ramp;D spending. However, these studies do not consider stock option exercises by Ramp;D employees which likely influence Ramp;D spending...

This study finds that stock return volatility is higher during periods of high tax policy uncertainty (TPU), even after controlling for other sources of general macroeconomic uncertainty. Further, we find that the relation between TPU and stock return volatility is more pronounced where firms...

Prior studies suggest that large book-tax differences (BTDs) are associated with future earnings changes (or earnings persistence), but it is not clear what drives this association. Studies such as Lev and Nissim (2004) examine the association between total BTDs and after-tax earnings changes,...

Using a dataset which records banks' ongoing requests of information from small commercial borrowers, we examine when banks use financial statements to monitor borrowers after loan origination. We find banks request financial statements for half the loans and this variation is related to...

We examine tax-motivated profit shifting as the outcome of corporate governance characteristics in multinational enterprises (MNEs). We propose a novel subsidiary-year measure of profit shifting, estimated from the responses of subsidiary profits to exogenous parent earnings shocks....

The ability to reduce current and future taxable income with prior years' taxable losses is highly relevant for explaining firms' effective and marginal tax rates. Compustat data on the tax loss carryforward (TLCF) are, however, often missing. We propose a method to impute estimated values for...

This article addresses the question whether net operating loss (NOL) observations can be implemented in the measurement of corporate tax avoidance and how the handling of losses affects the measurement outcome. I find that the implementation of NOLs in the measurement of tax avoidance is...

Prior research examines whether firms smooth their financial statement earnings. However, recent research also suggests that firms have significant incentives to smooth their taxable income. This study investigates innate and discretionary components of smooth taxable income and whether those...

This study investigates whether the smoothness of estimated taxable income influences its value relevance. Contrary to research that finds that smoothness enhances the value relevance of book income, we find that smoothness reduces the value relevance of taxable income. We decompose the...