The Effect of Deferred Tax Expenses and Leverage on Earnings Management (Study on Consumer Good Sector Companies Listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange in 2018-2022)

The goal of this study is to examine the influence of delayed tax expenses and leverage on profit management in consumer products firms listed on the Indonesian Stock Exchange between 2018 and 2022. The research method employed is a quantitative approach, including secondary data acquired from the company's annual reports. The analysis techniques used include normality, multicollinearity, autocorrelation, heteroscedasticity, and multiple linear regression tests. The results revealed that deferred tax expense has a detrimental and serious impact on profits management, implying that transient disparities between accounting profit and fiscal profit might be used to predict earnings management practices. In contrast, Leverage has no meaningful impact on earnings management, which indicates that the level of corporate debt is not a major factor in managerial decisions to carry out earnings management. These findings support agency theory in explaining the link between deferred tax expenditure and earnings management, but contradict agency theory in relation to leverage. This study provides implications for companies in improving financial statement transparency and controlling deferred tax differences to reduce earnings management practices.