Book-Tax Ratio and Earnings Quality of Listed Firms in Nigeria

Abstract

The main objective of this study is to examine the nature relationship between book-tax ratio and earnings quality of listed firms in Nigeria. The other specific objective is to assess the level of earnings quality of listed firms in Nigeria. The expo facto design was adopted for this study on 47 listed firms on the Nigeria Stock Exchange. This design relies on secondary data in exploring the relationship between book-tax ratio and earnings quality. The result revealed that book-tax ratio has no significant positive association with earnings quality of listed firms in Nigeria. This suggests that taxable income does not convey additional incremental information on earnings with respect to contemporaneous stock returns and accruals. To the best of our knowledge, this is one of the few studies that have investigated the relationship between book-tax ratio and earnings quality in different sectors in Nigeria.The result has implication on capital market and earnings quality. Thus, the result of this study will be useful to capital market regulators, standard setters, and future researchers.