mibbz wrote:asked a question in the hfck thread and nobody replied.what does deferred tax mean?
Two concepts: Current tax and Deferred tax.
Current tax - is the tax payable (or refund due)to KRA in that year, based on tax laws.
Tax laws determine profit differently from accounting principles.
Consider a bond held for trading at 100. Value of bond goes up to 110 and HF books a profit of 10. However, Tax of 3 (30%) is only paid if the bond is actually sold. So no current tax.
Deferred tax - tax payable or recoverable in future.
In the example above HF has an asset of 110 in balance sheet. They know if the sell it they will pay tax on the 10 profit they already booked.
So they will record the tax they are likely to pay once they sell the asset as deferred tax liability in their balance sheet.
When they actually sell the bond, they will move the tax of 3 from balance sheet to profit and loss. Thats how the P&L is affected.
Note: A simplified example.
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