사회⋅환경공헌에 기반을 둔 무형자산 지출이 수익비용대응 품질에 미치는 영향

초록

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the impact of CSR-based intangible expenditures on the revenue-expense matching quality. Matching principle is about the principle of expense recognition which states how to reflect expenses on the financial statements corresponding to the recognized revenues. The earnings which are approximately close to perfect matching are expected to be the useful information in assessing the potential economic benefits regarding the corporate activities. From the viewpoint of matching principle, this paper evaluates whether the economic benefits embedded in CSR-based intangible assets are, under current accounting standards, appropriately reflected in the earnings information. The results of this study are as follows. First, the increase in CSR-based intangible expenditures significantly reduces the matching quality. Second, the poor matching on CSR-based intangible expenditures is attributed to both the aggressive capitalization and the conservative expensing. These results seem to result from the fact that there is no sufficient reference for the accounting treatment of socially responsible corporate activities. This paper shows that the accounting for CSR-based intangible expenditures, due to the lack of sufficient statements in accounting standards, can be an additional factor to explain why the matching quality could be lowered. Prior research tried to primarily find the causes of poor matching from two sources―the increase in special items due to the changes in real economy and the adoption of new accounting standards. This paper extends the discussions of previous studies by providing the discussion on how the poor application of accounting standards ends up with the poor matching.

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