The information compliance indexes: the illustrative case of income taxes

Abstract

The adoption of IASB’s standards has represented, in European Union, an important effort of harmonization towards the financial reporting comprehensiveness, reliability, relevance, and comparability. This paper seeks to highlight the importance of Information Compliance Indexes (ICI), based on the accounting standards, as a proxy for reporting quality awareness. This approach is evidenced through an illustrative example about disclosures on deferred taxes, as required by IAS 12. This standard prescribes the accounting treatment for current taxes, deferred assets and liabilities. These issues are usually perceived by stakeholders as indicators of companies’ continuity and potential future returns. Based on non-financial listed companies of Euronext Lisbon regulated market, with reference to the end of fiscal years 2008 and 2012, an information compliance index was performed, based on that accounting standard. Then, this index was regressed with a set of performance and control indicators. Evidences have provided several statistical significant insights, which corroborate the findings that information compliance and disclosure levels depend from several performance and control indicators.