Does Schedule UTP Have Uniform Long-Run Effects on Corporate Tax Planning?

2017 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 63-79 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kim Honaker ◽  
Divesh S. Sharma
Keyword(s):  
Tax Planning ◽  
Internal Revenue Service ◽  
Tax Rates ◽  
Corporate Tax ◽  
Difference In Differences ◽  
Effective Tax Rates ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Foreign Presence ◽  
Two Measures ◽  
Tax Benefits

ABSTRACT This study investigates the effects of the Internal Revenue Service requiring confidential Schedule UTP disclosures on corporate tax planning over the period from 2008 to 2013. We make three important observations using a difference-in-differences design and two measures of tax planning. First, we find that firms generally report significantly lower current year uncertain tax benefits in the Schedule UTP reporting era. Second, we find these firms do not exhibit a change in cash effective tax rates. Third, we observe that while aggressive tax-planning firms and firms with more foreign presence likely face greater risk with increased transparency under Schedule UTP disclosures, these firms do not exhibit a response to Schedule UTP that is significantly different from that of other firms. Collectively, our results suggest that firms appear to have uniformly adjusted their reporting of uncertain tax benefits without altering the underlying nature of their tax planning.

Seeking Shelter: Empirically Modeling Tax Shelters Using Financial Statement Information

2010 ◽  
Vol 85 (5) ◽  
pp. 1693-1720 ◽  
Author(s):  
Petro Lisowsky
Keyword(s):  
Financial Statement ◽  
Tax Rates ◽  
Corporate Tax ◽  
Effective Tax Rates ◽  
Tax Havens ◽  
Tax Aggressiveness ◽  
Fin 48 ◽  
Tax Shelter ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Tax Shelters

ABSTRACT: Using confidential tax shelter and tax return data obtained from the Internal Revenue Service, this study develops and validates an expanded model for inferring the likelihood that a firm engages in a tax shelter. Results show that tax shelter likelihood is positively related to subsidiaries located in tax havens, foreign-source income, inconsistent book-tax treatment, litigation losses, use of promoters, profitability, and size, and negatively related to leverage. Supplemental tests show that total book-tax differences (BTDs) and the contingent tax liability reserve are significantly related to tax shelter usage, while discretionary permanent BTDs and long-run cash effective tax rates are not. Finally, the model is weaker, yet still significant, in the FIN 48 disclosure environment. This research provides investors and policymakers with an extended, validated measure to calculate the presence of extreme cases of corporate tax aggressiveness. Such information could also aid analysts and other tax and non-tax researchers in assessing the benefits and risks of firm behavior.

scholarly journals The board of directors and the corporate tax planning: Empirical Evidence from Tunisia

2012 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 142 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aliani Khaoula ◽  
Zarai Mohamed Ali
Keyword(s):  
Board Of Directors ◽  
Stock Exchange ◽  
Positive Association ◽  
Substantial Effect ◽  
Tax Planning ◽  
Tax Rates ◽  
Exchange Market ◽  
Corporate Tax ◽  
Effective Tax Rates ◽  
The Board Of Directors

Our study represents the first attempt to investigate whether board of directors’ attributes have an impact on corporate tax planning in a developing country. Using a sample of 32 companies listed on the Tunisian stock exchange market from 2000 to 2007, results indicate that duality and diversity on the board of directors significantly influences tax planning. Duality exhibits a negative relation with effective tax rates. However, diversity on the board shows a positive association. We don’t find relations between board size, independent directors and corporate tax planning. We contribute to the large literature on corporate tax planning by proposing that board’s characteristics may have a substantial effect on reducing effective tax rates. We add a new angle to existing studies on corporate tax governance by involving board’s diversity and sectorial effect. An implication of this study is that tax planning would be decreased by women’s presence on the board of directors. In addition, tax incentives granted by the state to some sectors may improve tax strategies.

The Effect of Voluntary Clawback Adoptions on Corporate Tax Policy

2019 ◽  
Vol 95 (1) ◽  
pp. 259-285
Author(s):  
Thomas R. Kubick ◽  
Thomas C. Omer ◽  
Zac Wiebe
Keyword(s):  
Financial Reporting ◽  
Tax Policy ◽  
Income Tax ◽  
Spillover Effect ◽  
Tax Planning ◽  
Tax Rates ◽  
Corporate Tax ◽  
Effective Tax Rate ◽  
Effective Tax Rates ◽  
Earnings Expectations

ABSTRACT Companies are adopting executive compensation recoupment (“clawback”) policies to discourage aggressive financial reporting choices. Recent research suggests clawback policies encourage other means of meeting earnings expectations. We suggest that reducing income tax expense is a means of meeting earnings expectations. We find that effective tax rates are lower after clawback adoption due to increased investments in tax planning. We identify three tax planning activities that clawback companies invest in to lower effective tax rates: purchases of auditor-provided tax services, increased connections to other low-tax companies, and use of tax havens. We provide evidence that effective tax rate decreases do not result from use of opportunistic income tax accruals, and that decreases are stronger among companies that adopt robust clawback policies. Additional tests indicate lower tax outcome volatility and longer, more readable tax footnotes following clawback adoption. Our results suggest a positive spillover effect of clawback adoption on corporate tax policy.

Long-Run Corporate Tax Avoidance

2008 ◽  
Vol 83 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-82 ◽  
Author(s):  
Scott D. Dyreng ◽  
Michelle Hanlon ◽  
Edward L. Maydew
Keyword(s):  
Tax Avoidance ◽  
Tax Rates ◽  
Corporate Tax ◽  
Effective Tax Rate ◽  
Initial Examination ◽  
Cross Sectional ◽  
Effective Tax Rates ◽  
Sample Mean ◽  
Tax Rate ◽  
Long Run

We develop and describe a new measure of long-run corporate tax avoidance that is based on the ability to pay a low amount of cash taxes per dollar of pre-tax earnings over long time periods. We label this measure the “long-run cash effective tax rate.” We use the long-run cash effective tax rate to examine (1) the extent to which some firms are able to avoid taxes over periods as long as ten years, and (2) how predictive one-year tax rates are for long-run tax avoidance. In our sample of 2,077 firms, we find there is considerable cross-sectional variation in tax avoidance. For example, approximately one-fourth of our sample firms are able to maintain long-run cash effective tax rates below 20 percent, compared to a sample mean tax rate of approximately 30 percent. We also find that annual cash effective tax rates are not very good predictors of long-run cash effective tax rates and, thus, are not accurate proxies for long-run tax avoidance. While there is some evidence of persistence in annual cash effective tax rates, the persistence is asymmetric. Low annual cash effective tax rates are more persistent than are high annual cash effective tax rates. An initial examination of characteristics of firms successful at keeping their cash effective tax rates low over long periods shows that they are well spread across industries but with some clustering.

How Do Cross-Country Differences in Corporate Tax Rates Affect Firm Value?

2012 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-17 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa A. Bryant-Kutcher ◽  
David A. Guenther ◽  
Mark Jackson
Keyword(s):  
Firm Value ◽  
Tax Rates ◽  
Corporate Tax ◽  
Effective Tax Rates ◽  
Tax Rate ◽  
Corporate Tax Rates ◽  
International Setting ◽  
Cross Country ◽  
Tax Benefits ◽  
Tax Costs

ABSTRACT We examine how differences in corporate tax rates across countries affect firm value for U.S. multinationals. Although competition for tax benefits may increase non-tax costs, in an international setting, transaction costs and other frictions may prevent tax differences from being completely competed away. We find that firm value, as measured by Tobin's q, is negatively related to foreign effective tax rates. This result is robust to the presence of growth and risk proxies and other control variables in the model. Our results provide empirical evidence that (1) differences in corporate tax rates are not completely offset by non-tax costs, and (2) the differences in tax costs are reflected in higher firm value for the low tax rate firms.

A Model of Multinational Income Shifting and an Application to Tax Planning with E-Commerce

2014 ◽  
Vol 36 (2) ◽  
pp. 27-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth J. Klassen ◽  
Stacie K. Laplante ◽  
Carla Carnaghan
Keyword(s):  
Tax Planning ◽  
Investment Model ◽  
Income Shifting ◽  
Tax Rates ◽  
Foreign Investments ◽  
Effective Tax Rates ◽  
Tax Rate ◽  
Foreign Earnings ◽  
Joint Consideration ◽  
The U.S

ABSTRACT: This manuscript develops an investment model that incorporates the joint consideration of income shifting by multinational parents to or from a foreign subsidiary and the decision to repatriate or reinvest foreign earnings. The model demonstrates that, while there is always an incentive to shift income into the U.S. from high-foreign-tax-rate subsidiaries, income shifting out of the U.S. to low-tax-rate countries occurs only under certain conditions. The model explicitly shows how the firms' required rate of return for foreign investments affects both repatriation and income shifting decisions. We show how the model can be used to refine extant research. We then apply it to a novel setting—using e-commerce for tax planning. We find firms in manufacturing industries with high levels of e-commerce have economically significant lower cash effective tax rates. This effect is magnified for firms that are less likely to have taxable repatriations. JEL Classifications: G38, H25, H32, M41.

Board Risk Oversight and Corporate Tax-Planning Practices

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mark S Beasley ◽  
Nathan C. Goldman ◽  
Christina Lewellen ◽  
Michelle McAllister
Keyword(s):  
Board Of Directors ◽  
Tax Planning ◽  
Enterprise Risk Management ◽  
Corporate Tax ◽  
Management Framework ◽  
Risk Management Framework ◽  
Enterprise Risk ◽  
The Board Of Directors ◽  
Tax Benefits ◽  
Risk Oversight

Risk oversight by the board of directors is a key component of a firm's enterprise risk management framework, and recently, boards have paid more attention to their firm's tax-planning activities. In this study, we use a hand-collected sample of proxy statement disclosures about the board's role in risk oversight and provide evidence that risk oversight is negatively associated with both tax uncertainty and overall tax burdens. We find that risk oversight is most strongly associated with positions that yield permanent tax benefits and also with less risky tax-planning activities. Overall, the evidence suggests that board risk oversight is associated with more effective tax-planning practices.

Do IRS Audits Deter Corporate Tax Avoidance?

2012 ◽  
Vol 87 (5) ◽  
pp. 1603-1639 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jeffrey L. Hoopes ◽  
Devan Mescall ◽  
Jeffrey A. Pittman
Keyword(s):  
Tax Avoidance ◽  
Tax Rates ◽  
Coefficient Estimates ◽  
Corporate Tax ◽  
Effective Tax Rates ◽  
Tax Enforcement ◽  
Public Firms ◽  
Large Samples ◽  
Percentage Points

ABSTRACT We extend research on the determinants of corporate tax avoidance to include the role of Internal Revenue Service (IRS) monitoring. Our evidence from large samples implies that U.S. public firms undertake less aggressive tax positions when tax enforcement is stricter. Reflecting its first-order economic impact on firms, our coefficient estimates imply that raising the probability of an IRS audit from 19 percent (the 25th percentile in our data) to 37 percent (the 75th percentile) increases their cash effective tax rates, on average, by nearly two percentage points, which amounts to a 7 percent increase in cash effective tax rates. These results are robust to controlling for firm size and time, which determine our primary proxy for IRS enforcement, in different ways; specifying several alternative dependent and test variables; and confronting potential endogeneity with instrumental variables and panel data estimations, among other techniques. JEL Classifications: M40; G34; G32; H25.

An Investigation of the Firm Size—Effective Tax Rate Relation in the 1980s

1993 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 167-182 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas C. Omer ◽  
Karen H. Molloy ◽  
David A. Ziebart
Keyword(s):  
Firm Size ◽  
Tax Burden ◽  
Tax Rates ◽  
Corporate Tax ◽  
Effective Tax Rate ◽  
Effective Tax Rates ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Tax Rate ◽  
Sample Composition ◽  
Rate Relation

Given the recent emphasis on effective tax rates by policy makers and accounting researchers, this study investigates the relation between firm size and corporate tax burdens on a yearly and an industry basis. The analysis is conducted using five effective tax measures employed in previous studies in order to determine the degree to which inferences between size and tax burden are robust across these different effective tax measures. The results indicate that the relation is fairly robust across measures and, in instances in which the relation is not upheld by our analysis, sample composition explains differences in the observed relation between firm size and corporate tax burden.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document