Using a large sample of small private companies, we show incremental influence of economic incentives over prescriptions from accounting standards by financial statement preparers in a code-law setting with high alignment between financial and tax reporting and no agency problems. Contrary to...

Private firms are likely to use the financial reporting process more for other objectives, such as tax savings, than for communicating performance. However, observing firms choosing accounting policies for tax-minimisation purposes is not straightforward due to (i) tax and non-tax costs of...