Tax accounting principles and corporate risk-taking

Becker J, Steinhoff M

Abstract

We analyze the role of business taxation for corporate risk-taking under different accounting principles (such as mark-to-market, lower-of-cost-or-market and historical cost). We demonstrate that conservative accounting may imply incentives to overinvest in risky assets. However, with imperfect loss offsets, the mark-to-market principle penalizes risky investment whereas more conservative accounting leaves the risk choice unaffected.