Social Trust, Market Competition, and Tax Avoidance: Evidence from Contemporary China

Author(s):  
Brian M. Lam ◽  
Gladie Lui ◽  
Connie Shum

Firms pay their fair share of taxes because they want to be perceived as good corporate citizens. However, managers might engage in tax-avoiding activities if such activities are value-maximizing. Using firms in China, this study focuses on the relation between social trust and corporate practice of tax avoidance for the period 2012 to 2016. It investigates whether firms with headquarters in societies with higher level of social trust are less likely to engage in tax-avoiding activities. It also investigates whether this negative relation is more pronounced for firms in industries that are less competitive. Results show that firms located in provinces with higher social trust level engage less in tax-avoiding activities, and the negative relation is more pronounced for firms in industries that are less competitive. Since corporate tax avoidance leads to significant loss of tax revenues, tax authorities in China should engage the services of forensic accountants to identify those corporations that practice aggressive tax avoidance. Furthermore, China needs to provide more forensic accounting training for practicing accountants and auditors. Educational institutions need to offer more forensic accounting courses in order to fill the gap between forensic accounting practices and education.

2018 ◽  
Vol 6 (4) ◽  
pp. 274
Author(s):  
Bin DAI ◽  
Jingyuan WANG ◽  
Huan CHANG

<p><em>The existing literatures showing that relationship-based transactions would affect company tax avoidance, but with few empirical evidences. This paper makes an empirical study on the topic of relationship-based transations and corporate tax avoidence, by using the data of manufacturing companies from 2008 to 2016, in Chinese A-share listed market, the empirical study shows that the more relationship-based transactions with suppliers (clients), the more aggressive company tax avoidance, which indicates that the bahavior of company tax avoidance is influenced by business strategies. The study also shows that company’s financial decisions may contain selfish motives of powerful executives. Further, the study indicates that relationship-based transactions can boost company’s propensity for aggressive tax avoidance during fierce market competition. Yet, there are varying degrees of diversification in the moderating effects and weakening control rights by senior managers.</em></p>


2013 ◽  
Vol 29 (5) ◽  
pp. 1421 ◽  
Author(s):  
Won-Wook Choi ◽  
Hyun-Ah Lee

Changes in the statutory corporate income tax rate provide firms with an opportunity to reduce their tax burden by shifting their taxable income from higher to lower tax rate years. One negative consequence of shifting taxable income across years is higher variation in book income for financial reporting purposes. Taxable income and book income are closely related in most countries, and, in general, reporting volatile book income across years is not a favorable signal to investors. This study investigates how firms shift taxable income and concurrently mitigate book income fluctuation by managing accrual components separately when the statutory income tax rate changes. Unlike prior studies, we decompose discretionary accruals into two components and examine distinctive patterns of accrual management in Korea, where book-tax conformity is high and aggressive tax avoidance is restricted. We find that firms manage book-tax accruals for taxable income shifting and manage book-only accruals to mitigate book income fluctuation. Furthermore, we find the extent of book-tax and book-only accruals management varies depending on the firms tax and financial reporting costs. The results of this study provide clear and compelling evidence of firms opportunistic accrual management behavior in response to statutory tax rate reduction.


2021 ◽  
Vol 8 (9) ◽  
pp. 72-75
Author(s):  
Tong Chen ◽  
◽  
Maisarah Mohamed Saat ◽  

Corporate social responsibility (CSR) has aroused heated discussion in recent years. The public generally believe that the enterprises with good CSR performance will not be involved in aggressive tax avoidance issues. However, as several famous socially responsible technology companies were found to be involved in aggressive tax avoidance, the association between those two variables has been doubted. This paper analyzes the effect of CSR on tax avoidance with the evidence of Chinese listed companies from 2016 to 2020. The finding is that good CSR performance leads to an increase in effective tax rate. In other words, the higher the CSR report score, the higher tax payment and the lower tendency in tax avoidance.


2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 639-659
Author(s):  
Abdullah Alsaadi

Purpose This study aims to investigate the effect of financial-tax reporting conformity jurisdictions on the association between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and aggressive tax avoidance. Design/methodology/approach Using a sample comprising firms domiciled in Europe for the period 2008–2016, this study uses regression analysis to test the impact of financial-tax reporting conformity jurisdictions on the association between CSR and aggressive tax avoidance. Findings The empirical results show that there is a positive association between CSR and tax avoidance, and firms headquartered in low financial-tax reporting conformity jurisdictions are more likely to engage in CSR to hedge against the potential negative consequences of aggressive tax-avoidance practices as compared to firms domiciled in countries with high level of financial-tax reporting conformity. Practical implications This study confirms Sikka’s (2010, 2013) view of “organised hypocrisy” act committed by firms to cover their socially irresponsible activities of aggressive tax avoidance by engaging in CSR. Results have implication for various regulatory bodies and investors in that the type of financial-tax conformity does impact the link between CSR and tax avoidance, and based on that, CSR firms may engage in CSR to overcome any negative reactions that could be caused as a result of tax avoidance. Originality/value To the best of the author’s knowledge, this study is the first to investigate the impact of financial-tax reporting conformity jurisdictions on the association between CSR and aggressive tax avoidance. This study also contributes to the literature in that, it uses an alternative data set which offers a more objective assessment of CSR measure and covers multiple countries.


2008 ◽  
Vol 23 (4) ◽  
pp. 505-519 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mary-Jo Kranacher ◽  
Bonnie W. Morris ◽  
Timothy A. Pearson ◽  
Richard A. Riley

ABSTRACT: The following paper describes the promise and reality of creating fraud and forensic accounting courses and curriculum. The project was supported by the National Institute of Justice (NIJ), the research, development, and evaluation agency of the U.S. Department of Justice. The Model Curriculum guidelines were developed in three main phases: (1) constituting a planning panel to guide the project and selecting the members of a technical working group of subject matter experts, (2) developing the curriculum guidelines, and (3) field-testing those guidelines. This paper provides background and motivation for the project, an overview of the project processes, and the educational guidelines (outcomes) that were developed by experts in the field.


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Souhir Abid ◽  
Saîda Dammak

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the effect of tax avoidance on corporate social responsibility performance. It also investigates whether audit quality affects tax avoidance practices by socially responsible performance. Design/methodology/approach Based on a sample of French non-financial companies over the period 2005 to 2016, this paper uses panel data regressions. The authors apply generalized least square panel regression to overcome autocorrelation and heteroscedasticity problems. For further robustness, this paper runs instrumental variable regressions using the three-stage instrument variable method (three-stage least square). Findings The results show that firms with high CSR scores are more likely to engage in aggressive tax avoidance. The findings also show that firms audited by high-quality auditors are more likely to get involved in CSR for hedging against the potential consequences of aggressive tax avoidance practices. Research limitations/implications The findings are consistent with risk management theory, which suggests that firm’s hedge against any reputational risks that might arise from avoiding taxes by engaging more in CSR. Practical implications Results have implications for policymakers in that CSR firms audited by high-quality auditors may engage in CSR to overcome any negative reactions that could be caused as a result of tax avoidance. Thus, they need to be cautious about managers’ opportunistic behavior and enhance monitoring to enforce social compliance and to be tax compliant. Originality/value This paper extends the existing literature by examining the effect of audit quality on the relationship between CSR performance and corporate tax avoidance. Audit quality is deemed to be an important governance feature that is likely to constraint managerial opportunistic behaviors. Audit quality, along with CSR performance, are associated with a higher level of tax avoidance.


2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 332-343
Author(s):  
Anita Nur Fadillah ◽  
Ita Salsalina Lingga

Abstract Tax aggressiveness is a tax avoidance that is carried out excessively by a business entity which leads to tax evasion. This will have an impact on reducing state revenue from taxes. There are many factors that trigger aggressive tax avoidance. This research is intended to examine the effect of transfer pricing, political connection and liquidity on tax aggressiveness both partially and simultaneously. The population in this study are mining industry entities listed in the Indonesian Stock Exchange for the year of 2016-2019. The sample selection is determined by purposive sampling method. Samples obtained as many as 8 companies for 4 years with a total of 32 samples. Analysis of data uses multiple regression. The result findings indicate that in partially there is no influence of transfer pricing and liquidity on tax aggressiveness, while political connection affects tax aggressiveness. Furthermore, in simultaneously transfer pricing, political connection and liquidity affect tax aggressiveness.   Keywords : Transfer Pricing, Political Connection, Liquidity, and Tax Aggressiveness  


2021 ◽  
Vol ahead-of-print (ahead-of-print) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vahab Rostami ◽  
Leyla Rezaei

Purpose This study aims to track product market competition and financial flexibility on firms’ business strategies. Design/methodology/approach For this purpose, 187 listed firms on the Tehran Stock Exchange were selected by the systematic elimination for 2012–2018. The hypotheses were examined using the linear regression model. Ittner and Larcker’s (1997) model assesses the business strategy (dependent variable). The Herfindahl–Hirschman index is used to assess the product market competition (independent variable). Finally, the Frank and Goyal’s (2009) model investigates financial flexibility (independent variable). Findings The findings indicate that competition in the product market has significantly declined the resort of defensive and invasive business strategies and intensified opportunistic analytical and opportunistic strategies, benefiting from financial flexibility and facilitating defensive and opportunistic adaptation and decreased analytic and invasive strategies. Besides, the product market competition contributes to the firm’s financial flexibility and analytical, opportunistic, invasive and defensive strategies. Most of the studies in the field of business strategy analyzed some factors, such as performance (Zhang, 2016), tax avoidance (Higgins et al., 2015) and share pricing risk (Habib and Hasan, 2017). There is no study to assess the effect of business strategy on product market competition and financial flexibility. Originality/value The present study’s findings provide some invaluable concepts for firm managers on the significance of competition in the product market and financial flexibility. Focusing on competition intensity and flexibility level can deal with the board’s ambiguities on market structure and competitive status. The use of profitably competitive investment opportunities leads to selecting the most beneficial strategies, leading to a more efficient allocation of scarce resources and, finally, the enhancement of organizational performance.


2018 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 567-583 ◽  
Author(s):  
Konrad Raczkowski ◽  
Bogdan Mróz

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present an up-to-date estimation of the tax gaps (TGs) of 35 countries (28 EU member states and 7 additional countries – Australia, Canada, Japan, New Zealand, Turkey, Switzerland and the USA, both as a percentage of the gross domestic product (GDP) and a nominal value (in US$). Design/methodology/approach The authors’ empirical study was carried out on 35 selected countries. To estimate the TG, indirect methodology has been applied, where the basic components used in the estimation procedure are the level of the shadow economy estimated with the multiple indicators multiple causes method, the GDP at current prices (in US$), the total tax rate (TTR) of a given country and the indirect method of follow-up and estimation of lacking data. Findings The basic finding of the research is that the level of the TG is determined individually for a given country and is strongly correlated with the GDP, i.e. if the GDP is high, the TG as the percentage of the GDP is lower in the majority of countries. It is particularly easily noticeable in countries such as the USA (TG – 3.8 per cent of the GDP), the Great Britain (TG – 3.2 per cent of the GDP) or Japan (TG – 4.3 per cent of the GDP). Research limitations/implications A limitation of the adopted research method is the lack of application of direct (supplementary) methods which would include potentially lost contributions from foreign sources and not registered taxpayers. Another research constraint is that the authors’ estimations do not take into account the so-called direct top-down approach based on the VAT Theoretical Total Liability. The weakness of the adopted procedure of estimation is also the use of TTR only instead of comparative approach including tax burdens and average tax rate. Practical implications TG has recently become a hotly debated issue and poses a big challenge to the public finance in many countries. The paper provides some recommendations for the policymakers how to reduce the size of the TG. Social implications Tax evasion and tax avoidance leading to the emergence and expansion of the TG erode the business ethics and distort the rules of fair competition, thus undermining the social trust and moral infrastructure of business transactions. Originality/value One of the major research findings is that 30 per cent of the TG in a given country is determined by the TTR, which – for the first time – provides empirical proof that tax policy (as part of overall economic policy) plays an important role and that it may determine the fiscal effectiveness of a given country.


2019 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 268-288 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zabihollah Rezaee ◽  
Jim Wang

Purpose This paper aims to examine the relevance of Big Data to forensic accounting practice and education by gathering opinions from a sample of academics and practitioners in China. Design/methodology/approach The authors conduct a survey of academics and practitioners regarding the desired demand, importance and content of Big Data educational skills and topics for forensic accounting education to effectively respond to challenges and opportunities in the age of Big Data. Findings Results indicate that the demand for and interest in Big Data/data analytics and forensic accounting will continue to increase; Big Data/data analytics and forensic accounting should be integrated into the business curriculum; many of the suggested Big Data topics should be integrated into forensic accounting education; and some attributes and techniques of Big Data are important in improving forensic accounting education and practice. Research limitations/implications Readers should interpret the results with caution because of the sample size (95 academics and 103 practitioners) and responses obtained from academics and practitioners in one country (China) that may not be representative of the global population. Practical implications The results are useful in integrating Big Data topics into the forensic accounting curriculum and in redesigning the forensic accounting courses/programs. Social implications The results have implications for forensic accountants in effectively fulfilling their responsibilities to their profession and society by combating fraud. Originality/value This study provides educational, research and practical implications as Big Data and forensic accounting are advancing.


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