Introduction
This paper reviews one of the more complex areas of financial reporting: accounting for income taxes (AFIT). AFIT is the
process by which (1) future cash tax payments and refunds arising from current and past transactions are recorded as
deferred tax assets and liabilities in an attempt to accurately portray the financial position of the firm, and (2) the income
tax expense is reported in an attempt to accurately portray the current financial performance of the firm. Before this
millennium, AFIT and its implications for financial reporting and effective tax planning attracted limited attention in
scholarly circles.1 However, in recent years, both financial accounting and tax researchers have begun to focus on AFIT, so
much so that AFIT has become the most active area of accounting research in taxation.2 Almost all of the studies have been