We examine whether public financial statement information is incrementally useful in forecasting confidential taxable income. More precise firm-level taxable income forecasts can improve policymakers’ modeling of the tax system and the analysis of proposed changes in corporate tax law, while more accurate macro-level forecasts of corporate taxable income can improve estimates of corporate tax revenues, a significant component of the federal budget. We find the addition of financial statement information improves firm- and industry-level estimates of future taxable income by primarily providing more timely information, but also through accruals. Our results suggest that macroeconomic forecasts of taxable income may be further improved by the aggregation of firm-level forecasts that are generated using financial statement information. Importantly, our results are driven primarily by tax information in financial statements. We also contribute to the research on the information content of financial statement information for forecasting economic activity.

中文翻译：

---

纳入财务报表信息以改进企业应税收入的预测

我们研究了公开财务报表信息在预测机密应税收入方面是否越来越有用。更准确的企业级应税收入预测可以改善政策制定者对税收制度的建模和对公司税法拟议变更的分析，而更准确的企业应税收入宏观预测可以改进对企业税收收入的估计，这是一个重要组成部分的联邦预算。我们发现，财务报表信息的添加主要通过提供更及时的信息，但也通过应计项目改善了公司和行业对未来应税收入的估计。我们的研究结果表明，通过汇总使用财务报表信息生成的公司层面的预测，可进一步改进对应税收入的宏观经济预测。重要的，我们的业绩主要受财务报表中的税务信息驱动。我们还为预测经济活动的财务报表信息的信息内容的研究做出了贡献。