Historical Cost and General Price Level Tax Rates in Seven Industries .
研究了112家公司在19年间历史成本税率与一般物价水平税率的差异，发现高通胀时期历史成本税率存在显著偏差，且偏差因行业资产负债表构成而异。
Abstract Recently the Financial Accounting Standards Board issued a pronouncement, Statement of Financial Accounting Standards No. 33 on accounting for the effects of changes in general and specific prices. While the effects of inflation are shown in the 1979 annual reports, Congress, prior to the Economic Recovery Tax Act of 1981, did not provide for adjustments for inflation in the computation of one's tax liability. This reluctance to amend the Tax Code to incorporate the effects of changing prices leads to distorted tax rates. This study examines 112 firms from seven industries for an extended period of time by using an estimating technique which attempts to make certain adjustments to financial accounting data reported in the COMPUSTAT tapes. The authors compare three tax rates for each of the firms for a period of 19 years. The first tax rate comparison presented shows the difference between the general price level (including monetary gains and losses) and historical cost tax rates. The second tax rate comparison highlights only the effect of depreciation on the differential between the two types of tax rates. The third tax rate comparison shows the effect of monetary gains and losses. The research results indicate that large biases in the historical cost tax rates exist in periods of time showing high inflation rates. Even in times of low inflation rates biases can and do exist. In addition, the impact of the tax rate differential seems to vary from industry to industry depending upon the composition of the balance sheets.