Book-Tax Differences as an Indicator of Financial Distress

We contend that tax-related information, which has not yet been considered by extant research, can significantly improve bankruptcy prediction. We investigate the association between abnormal changes in book-tax differences (BTDs) and bankruptcy using a hazard model and out-of-sample testing as in Shumway (2001). We find that information regarding abnormal changes in BTDs significantly increases our ability to ex ante identify firms that have an increased likelihood of going bankrupt in the coming five-year period. The information provided by BTDs significantly adds information to traditional models for predicting bankruptcy, such as that proposed by Ohlson (1980), and also expands the prediction window beyond the traditional two-year time frame.