Steve Van Uytbergen

Financial statement filing lags: An empirical analysis among small firms

This article examines financial statement filing lags among a sample of Belgian small firms. Our results indicate that around one-third of small firm financial statements are filed late (after the legal deadline), but that monetary sanctions could be an effective tool to encourage compliance with legal deadlines. Whereas the deadline and late filing sanctions are filing incentives, various factors, such as firm size and presence of an external financial statement audit, also affect financial statement filing lags. Evidence indicated that extremely late filings were associated with lower financial statement quality.

To Shift or Not To Shift? Intertemporal Income Shifting as a Response to the Risk Capital Allowance Introduction in Belgium

Abstract This study examines how firms shift profits from one period to another in response to the introduction of an allowance for corporate equity. We focus on the introduction of the risk capital allowance in Belgium by the law of 22 June 2005. We predict and find that firms with relatively low (but positive) earnings in 2006 have incentives to defer profits in 2005 and that this effect is stronger for firms with higher equity ratios. Conversely, we predict that firms that are highly profitable in 2006 and have large net operating loss carryforwards in 2005 have incentives to accelerate profits. We find that only subsets of firms react to the latter incentive, in particular firms with higher equity ratios. Our findings show that tax-related benefits motivate firms to engage in conforming tax avoidance and provide evidence of cross-sectional variations in their reaction to these incentives. These insights contribute to the literature outlining the costs and benefits of changes in tax regimes and documenting earnings management in response to tax incentives in a high book-tax-conform environment.