News • University of Passau

On June 30, 2022, Prof. Flagmeier gave a presentation on "Does private firms' disclosure affect public peers' information environment?" at the Accounting Brown-Bag Seminar at HU Berlin.

At the 44th Annual Congress of the European Accounting Association in Bergen / Norway, Professor Flagmeier gave a presentation on "Tax loss carryforward disclosure".

In the summer semester 2022, the chair organizes the Brown Bag Seminar Accounting, Finance and Taxation. Current research projects from the department will be presented and discussed. Lecturers are internal and external (national and international) scientists.
For doctoral students, Prof. Dr. Flagmeier offers an accompanying doctoral course ("How to discuss a paper in Accounting, Finance and Taxation"), in which the critical discussion of scientific papers in the field of Accounting, Finance and Taxation is learned and trained. More information can be found on StudIP under the event number 39877.

The article When do firms highlight their effective tax rate? by Prof. Dr. Vanessa Flagmeier, Prof. Dr. Jens Müller and Prof. Dr. Caren Sureth-Sloane (both Paderborn University) is now available online: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00014788.2021.1958669 (Accounting and Business Research). The study examines the visibility of tax information in firms’ annual reports. Firms face a trade-off in their disclosure decision as there are capital market incentives to highlight for example a decreasing effective tax rate but at the same time this might attract public attention and result in reputational costs. Findings indicate that incentives to highlight such tax rate outweigh potential concerns, resulting in higher disclosure visibility. However, this only holds for moderate decreases from ‘normal’ tax rate levels. The study adds to our understanding of firms’ tax disclosure behaviour by indicating how firms incorporate different stakeholder groups’ preferences into their disclosure decision.

The participants of the bachelor seminar with Prof. Vanessa Flagmeier

Is there a connection between financial reporting and the digitalization of companies? This exciting and highly topical question has been approached by bachelor- and master students in Prof. Dr. Vanessa Flagmeier’s brand new seminar.

For the new accounting seminar in the summer term 2021, Prof. Dr. Flagmeier chose the topic digitalization and financial reporting. Bachelor- and master students empirically analysed the relation between digitalization and various parameters of financial reporting for a sample of German MDAX companies. The analysis focused on the length of annual reports, the timing of their publishing, audit fees, history of available annual reports, earnings management and tax avoidance.

After a joint kick-off event the students worked alone or in teams on their topic, presented interim results in May and recently handed in their seminar paper after a two-month working period. In a final workshop the results were presented and discussed.

A central issue of the empirical analysis was assessing the degree of digitalization in each company. Students had to be creative and followed various approaches. They used parameters like the frequency of terms associated with digitalization in annual reports, the technological proficiency displayed in a company’s website, digital competence on the management level and different industry indices. Results show that it is mostly companies in the media and communication industry that exhibit a high level of digitalization whereas real estate companies tend to be less digitalized.

The seminar digitalization and financial reporting showed to participants the exciting development of digitalization in accounting that has become a focus of research in recent years. Prof. Dr. Vanessa Flagmeier’s seminar thus also contributes to one of the University of Passau’s research guiding themes ‘Digitalisation, Networked Society and (Internet) Cultures’.

We were happy to offer a digital research presentation in cooperation with the ICEBS of the University of Passau and TRR266 Accounting for Transparency on June 11 2021.

Thank you Professor Jeffrey Hoopes from the University of North Carolina for your insights on "Tax Boycotts"!

After Jeffs presentation, a PhD workshop on the topic "Taxes and Disclosure" followed.

Since winter term 2015/16 the School of Business, Economics and Information Systems supports excellent students with the honors-programme. On 20 may 2021 Prof Dr Vanessa Flagmeier held a digital presentation as part of the research overview lecture titled "When do firms highlight their effective tax rate?”.

In the upcoming winter semester the course Financial Statement Analysis will be held in english again. For more information click here.

The article The Information Content of Deferred Taxes Under IFRS is published in the European Accounting review. Here you can find the complete article.