Global Journal of Management and Business Research, D: Accounting and Auditing, Volume 22 Issue 2

relationship between the tax burden and the management of accounting data of firms in Cameroon . a) The Data This paper uses accounting data the Cameroonian National Institute of Statistics (INS). It was then possible to assess the level of companies’ earnings management and the tax burden through the indicators generally used in the literature. They are based on the year-end balance sheets and income statements of 1,500 firms operating in Cameroon, and belonging to several sectors of activity, over the period 2014-2017. In addition, the final sample of 1474 firms used for the analyse s 1 is made up of large and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), from different sectors of activity. Those firms are all subject to corporate income tax, they have been considered for the year 201 7 2 But this approach does not allow us to highlight the different levels of data management. As a result, the accounting data management is measured following the works of Thauvron, 2000; Baghar, 2018, in which the discretionary part of the accruals . With regards to the variables used in this study, they were identified to meet our objective of assessing the causal relationship between tax burdens and accounting manipulation. In the existing empirical works, accounting data management is measured by different indicators. In the case of Amara, Amar, and Jarboui, 2013; Fhiqi and Ni Nyoman, 2019, this variable is dichotomous, taking the value of 1 if the company is subject to data management and 0 otherwise. 3 The control variables are financial ratios that allow for the assessment of firm’s indebtedness, liquidity, solvency, size, etc. In addition, firms’ earnings management decisions could be correlated over time. They could also depend on the performance and information provided in previous years. For that reasons, some lagged variables are considered. The different variables used are summarized in the table below a re considered to this end. The tax burden is measured by the effective tax rate (Halleux and Valenduc, 2007). The effective tax rate is the ratio of income tax to pre-tax income plus depreciation and provisions (Othman and Zéghal, 2006; Rekik and Omri, 2009; Djeudja, 2017). Taxation and Accounting Data Management: An Empirical Study in Cameroon © 2022 Global Journals 70 Global Journal of Management and Business Research Volume XXII Issue II Version I Year 2022 ( )D III. D ata and M odel S pecification 1 The database was cleaned by deleting companies with multiple missing data and missing financial ratios. 2 Lagged variables until the year t-2 have been considered 3 Accrual accounting variables