A Study of Earnings Managent & Financial Statement Reporting Issues Surroding Public Traded Corporations

Wu, Juntao (2015) A Study of Earnings Managent & Financial Statement Reporting Issues Surroding Public Traded Corporations. Undergraduate thesis, under the direction of Victoria Dickinson from School of Accountancy, The University of Mississippi.

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Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to study some publicly traded companies’ financial reporting systems. I chose four companies in different industries to conduct a series of analyses and evaluations. In Section One, the quality of these companies’ financial reporting systems is carefully examined and evaluated. First, I discuss some potential earnings management strategies that managers from different departments tend to adopt. Next, some of the chosen companies’ important policies, such as revenue recognition, are compared with industrial standards or relevant policies from competitors. In addition, earnings management and financial reporting issues that relate to income taxes are discussed separately. Three major perspectives are considered: 1. recognition of deferred tax asset and valuation allowance accounts; 2. the possible effects of changing valuation allowance on earnings; 3. disclosure of tax planning strategies in the financial report. Section Two discusses corresponding internal control systems that can assist corporations in alleviating the adverse effects from inaccurate and inefficient financial reporting. First, COSO internal control framework is used as the guideline for developing the internal control process. Secondly, certain industrial factors are considered during the risk identification and assessment procedure. Next, a general audit plan is developed for each company. I discuss the budgeted work plan in terms of hours of effort for each task necessary to audit the internal control system. The deferred tax accounts are also discussed.

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