The Italian Unlisted Companies’ Earnings Management Practices: The Impacts of Fiscal and Financial Incentives

Abstract

This study explores the Italian unlisted companies’ earnings management practices. Adopting the earnings distribution approach and the logit analysis, it shows that, as in other countries where there is a close alignment between accounting and tax rules, fiscal incentives encourage companies with negative earnings to manage them upward to overcome the threshold of zero decreasing the probability of tax authorities’ investigations and those with positive earnings to manage them downward to bring them close to zero minimizing tax payments. As a result, they tend to report slightly positive earnings. The Italian unlisted companies’ earnings management practices are not limited by financial incentives, here intended in terms of levels of bank loans. Rather, companies with higher level of bank loans are more likely to manage earnings. This study contributes to better understand earnings management practices in unlisted companies and not English-speaking contexts that are little explored in literature. Moreover, it contributes to better understand the nature and consequences of the impacts of fiscal and financial incentives on earnings management practices. The findings should be beneficial to stakeholders and auditors of unlisted companies and tax authorities.

Keywords: Earnings management, Earnings distribution approach, Avoidance of losses, Minimization of tax payments, Fiscal incentives, Financial incentives, Unlisted companies, Italy