Prior studies of classification shifting in the income statement conclude that managers misclassify core expenses as special items to inflate reported core earnings (McVay 2006; Fan, Barua, Cready, and Thomas 2010). These studies do not distinguish between the core expense components—cost of goods sold ( COGS ) and selling, general, and administrative expenses ( SGA ). This study models COGS and SGA separately, and investigates managers’ misclassification of COGS versus SGA to meet different profitability benchmarks. We find that COGS (but not SGA ) misclassification is associated with just beating the benchmark of gross margin four quarters earlier. In comparison, both COGS and SGA misclassification are associated with just beating the benchmarks of zero core earnings, prior‐year core earnings, and analyst earnings forecasts in the fourth fiscal quarter. We also investigate real activities management ( RAM ) of COGS and SGA to meet benchmarks, and find that managers engage in RAM of COGS to achieve the gross margin benchmark, but not core earnings benchmarks. We demonstrate that unexpected SGA contains a significant misclassification effect distinct from RAM , suggesting that future RAM research should consider controlling for expense misclassification. Overall, our study extends prior literature on both classification shifting and RAM .

McVay (2006) concludes that managers opportunistically shift core expenses to special items to inflate current core earnings, resulting in a positive relation between unexpected core earnings and income-decreasing special items. However, she further notes that this relation disappears when contemporaneous accruals are dropped from the core earnings expectations model. McVay (2006) calls for research to improve the core earnings expectations model and to provide additional cross-sectional tests of classification shifting. Using a core earnings expectations model that is not dependent on accrual special items, we show that classification shifting is more likely in the fourth quarter than in interim quarters. We also find more evidence of classification shifting when the ability of managers to manipulate accruals appears to be constrained and in meeting a range of earnings benchmarks. Overall, our evidence provides broad support for McVay’s (2006) conclusion that managers engage in classification shifting. Our study also sheds new understanding of the conditions under which managers are more likely to employ classification shifting.