A corporate tax rate cut provides an incentive for corporations to shift taxable income from years before the tax rate cut to post-reform years. Our study analyzes whether depreciations and write-offs are used to achieve intertemporal income shifting. Using a panel of German manufacturing firms, we test in a difference-in-differences setting whether firms reacted to the announced 2008 corporate tax rate cut of 10 percentage points by accumulating depreciation expenses in the pre-reform year. Our results suggest that depreciation expenses in 2007 are on average about 2.5% higher than in the other observation years. Our analysis also sheds light on heterogeneity in intertemporal income shifting across firms. We provide evidence for a weaker reaction of loss firms resulting from a lower tax incentive. By contrast, we find stronger intertemporal income shifting of large firms and especially firms with a relatively high share of new investments in the capital stock. While the first result is consistent with a higher cost-efficiency of tax planning of large firms, the second finding suggests that investments in the current year provide more discretion for (tax-induced) earnings management.

中文翻译：

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跨时期收入在大幅度减税附近转移：折旧

公司税率下​​调为企业将应税收入从税率下调之前的年份转移到改革后的年份提供了动力。我们的研究分析了折旧和冲销是否用于实现跨期收入转移。我们使用德国制造公司组成的小组，进行了差异检验，该差异设定了企业是否对改革前一年累计的折旧费用做出了反应，以宣布的2008年公司税率下​​调10个百分点。我们的结果表明，2007年的折旧费用平均比其他观察年高约2.5％。我们的分析还揭示了跨公司间跨期收入转移的异质性。我们提供的证据表明，由于税收优惠较低，亏损公司的反应较弱。相比之下，我们发现大型企业，尤其是在资本存量中新投资份额较高的企业，其跨期收入转移更为强劲。虽然第一个结果与大公司税收筹划的更高成本效率相一致，但是第二个发现表明，当年的投资为（税收引起的）收益管理提供了更多的自由度。