This article had as an objective to confirm if deferred tax income analysis increases significantly the detection of earnings management. Data were collected for the mining, steelworks, metallurgy and textile industries for the period 2000-2004, through probit and logit analysis established on the Modified Jones and Kang & Sivaramakrishnan models. The paper found evidences that analysis of deferred tax income does not increment the predictive power of the analyzed models. The divergence can be explained because most of the literature on the subject dealt with American firms and industries that supposedly have different incentive factors for earnings management. Further, the differences in Brazilian firms can be originated by the flexible use of the partial method for recognition of tax deferral.
Earnings management; accounting income; deferred tax; probit analysis; logit analysis