The information content of tax loss carryforwards - IAS 12 vs. valuation allowance

This is the first study that analyzes the predictive ability of deferred tax information under IFRS. Iexamine whether deferred taxes provide information about future tax payments and future performance,using a German sample of IFRS firms. The focus on tax loss carryforwards enables a separation of thetwo relations, testing on the one hand, the relation between recognized deferred tax assets and future taxpayments and on the other hand, the relation between the non-usable part of tax losses and futureearnings. I find significantly negative coefficients for both deferred tax items, indicating that higherrecognized deferred tax assets are associated with lower future tax payments and higher non-usable taxloss carryforwards with lower future performance. Additionally, I compare the tax accounts predictiveability for a matched German and US sample and find no significant differences between firms reportingunder IFRS and US-GAAP. Taken together, the evidence suggests that deferred tax items for tax losscarryforwards reported under IFRS provide useful information about future outcomes and that thispredictive ability does not differ significantly from firms reporting under US-GAAP.Vanessa Flagmeie