Does the IFRS Adoption in Selected Countries Coincide with a Harmonisation of Accounting for Deferred Tax and Goodwill?

Abstract

This study assesses to what extent deferred taxation (DT) and goodwill (GW) accounting practices of listed companies in Australia, Hong Kong and the United Kingdom are harmonised before and after the IFRS adoption in these countries, whether the selected countries IFRS adoption coincides with a significant increase of DT and GW accounting harmony, and whether significant pre/post IFRS adoption changes in the DT and GW accounting policy choices of listed companies in these countries are observable. A McNemar test of correlated proportions with Bowker extension and the Split C-Index with a bootstrapping significance test are used for these investigations. The empirical results of this study demonstrate that the analysed companies GW accounting policy choices within Hong Kong and the United Kingdom as well as across all analysed countries change significantly between our pre (2003) and post (2006) IFRS observations. Evidence that some within-country, between-country and overall DT and GW harmonisation coincides with the IFRS adoption in the selected countries is provided. However, only the between-country harmonisation of the analysed companies DT and GW accounting practices appears to be significant.