Voluntary Disclosure Responses to Mandated Disclosure: Evidence from Australian Corporate Tax Transparency

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allison Kays
Keyword(s):  
Voluntary Disclosure ◽  
Tax Planning ◽  
Public Disclosure ◽  
Corporate Tax ◽  
Public Firms ◽  
Additional Information ◽  
Proprietary Costs ◽  
Tax Returns ◽  
Disclosure Responses ◽  
Reputational Costs

In order to deter aggressive tax planning, the Australian government mandated public disclosure of three line items from large corporations' tax returns. However, there is no evidence that the mandated disclosure led public firms to pay more taxes (Hoopes, Robinson, and Slemrod 2018). Instead, I find that firms strategically offset expected reputational costs by voluntarily issuing supplemental information. Specifically, when managers expect new reputational costs from the mandated tax return disclosure (wherein the disclosure reveals an unexpectedly low tax liability) and low proprietary costs from a supplemental voluntary disclosure (wherein the firm discloses its nonaggressive tax planning), firms are likely to voluntarily disclose information that both preempts and supplements the government's mandatory disclosure. Thus, when mandatory disclosures are incomplete, firms will voluntarily issue additional information to remain in control of their disclosure environments.

The Role of Auditors, Non-Auditors, and Internal Tax Departments in Corporate Tax Aggressiveness

2015 ◽  
Vol 91 (1) ◽  
pp. 179-205 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kenneth J. Klassen ◽  
Petro Lisowsky ◽  
Devan Mescall
Keyword(s):  
Tax Compliance ◽  
Tax Planning ◽  
Internal Revenue Service ◽  
Corporate Tax ◽  
Tax Aggressiveness ◽  
Big 4 ◽  
Confidential Data ◽  
Tax Preparer ◽  
Tax Returns

ABSTRACT Using confidential data from the Internal Revenue Service on who signs a corporation's tax return, we investigate whether the party primarily responsible for the tax compliance function of the firm—the auditor, an external non-auditor, or the internal tax department—is related to the corporation's tax aggressiveness. We report three key findings: (1) firms preparing their own tax returns or hiring a non-auditor claim more aggressive tax positions than firms using their auditor as the tax preparer; (2) auditor-provided tax services are related to tax aggressiveness even after considering tax preparer identity, which supports and extends prior research using tax fees as a proxy for tax planning; and (3) Big 4 tax preparers, in particular, are linked to less tax aggressiveness when they are the auditor than when they are not the auditor. Our findings help policymakers and researchers better understand an important feature of tax compliance intermediaries; particularly, how the dual role via audits is related to observable corporate tax outcomes.

Proprietary costs: Why do R&D-active firms choose single-lender financing?

2022 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul A. Griffin ◽  
Hyun A Hong ◽  
Ji Woo Ryou
Keyword(s):  
Voluntary Disclosure ◽  
Sensitive Information ◽  
Public Disclosure ◽  
The Public ◽  
Proprietary Costs ◽  
The Us ◽  
Loan Financing ◽  
Financing Choice ◽  
Private Loan ◽  
Choice Literature

We examine whether proprietary costs drive R&D-active firms’ choice of private loan structure. We find that R&D-active firms are more likely to choose single-lender over multi-lender private loan financing. This is consistent with the theory that high-ability entrepreneurs protect their proprietary knowledge by communicating it to a single lender while disclosing generic and less sensitive information to the public. This propensity, however, significantly decreases after the enactment of the American Inventor’s Protection Act (AIPA), which accelerated public disclosure of firms’ patent details in filings with the US Patent and Trademark Office. This accelerated public disclosure potentially caused R&D information to spill over to rivals, increasing the proprietary costs of single-lender borrowers. AIPA enactment also increased the spread on R&D-active firms’ single-lender loans. These findings contribute to the voluntary disclosure and financing-choice literature by linking R&D-active firms’ choice of single-lender financing to the proprietary costs of public disclosure.

scholarly journals Incentives for Tax Planning and Avoidance: Evidence from the Field

2013 ◽  
Vol 89 (3) ◽  
pp. 991-1023 ◽  
Author(s):  
John R. Graham ◽  
Michelle Hanlon ◽  
Terry Shevlin ◽  
Nemit Shroff
Keyword(s):  
Tax Planning ◽  
Data Availability ◽  
Financial Accounting ◽  
Publicly Traded ◽  
Corporate Tax ◽  
Public Firms ◽  
Planning Strategy ◽  
Earnings Per Share ◽  
Survey Responses ◽  
Reputational Concerns

ABSTRACT We analyze survey responses from nearly 600 corporate tax executives to investigate firms' incentives and disincentives for tax planning. While many researchers hypothesize that reputational concerns affect the degree to which managers engage in tax planning, this hypothesis is difficult to test with archival data. Our survey allows us to investigate reputational influences and, indeed, we find that reputational concerns are important—69 percent of executives rate reputation as important and the factor ranks second in order of importance among all factors explaining why firms do not adopt a potential tax planning strategy. We also find that financial accounting incentives play a role. For example, 84 percent of publicly traded firms respond that top management at their company cares at least as much about the GAAP ETR as they do about cash taxes paid and 57 percent of public firms say that increasing earnings per share is an important outcome from a tax planning strategy. JEL Classifications: D83; G31, M41. Data Availability: Survey responses are confidential. Other data are available from public sources identified in the paper.

A Case for Company-Specific Public Disclosure of Corporate Tax Returns

2015 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-21 ◽  
Author(s):  
Donald Morris
Keyword(s):  
Tax Reform ◽  
Tax Compliance ◽  
Public Disclosure ◽  
Corporate Tax ◽  
Public And Private ◽  
Public Companies ◽  
The Public ◽  
Fiduciary Responsibility ◽  
Tax Returns ◽  
Private Corporations

ABSTRACT Tax returns of both public and private corporations are protected from IRS disclosure by Internal Revenue Code §6103. Historically, most arguments against public disclosure of tax information were aimed at personal returns. This article evaluates arguments both opposing and favoring company-specific public disclosure of corporate tax returns, focusing on public companies and federal government contractors. Among reasons against disclosure are the fear that (1) it will add to, rather than reduce, confusion about corporate accounting and tax practices, (2) compliance will be reduced as companies seek to hide details of their revenue and expenses, and (3) proprietary information, including trade secrets, will be disclosed. Among reasons favoring disclosure are the (1) results of a national survey, (2) improvement of tax compliance, (3) limited value of privacy given that it does not cover disagreements with the IRS that wind up in court, (4) fiduciary responsibility corporations owe to the public, and (5) tendency of increased transparency to intensify public pressure for tax reform. Based on this analysis, it is argued that the benefits to be gained by increasing disclosure—especially encouraging tax reform—outweigh the objections raised, which either lack empirical basis or may be met with available remedies.

Corporate Tax Privacy and Human Rights

2019 ◽  
pp. 279-302
Author(s):  
Joshua D. Blank
Keyword(s):  
Tax Compliance ◽  
The United States ◽  
Tax Planning ◽  
Public Access ◽  
Tax Law ◽  
Corporate Tax ◽  
The Public ◽  
Tax Returns ◽  
The Government ◽  
Relationship Of

This chapter examines the relationship of corporate tax privacy and tax compliance from a new vantage point, which is called the “intercorporate perspective.” In the United States, all tax returns and return information of corporations are confidential. An unappreciated value of corporate tax privacy is that it can limit the pressure to pursue aggressive tax planning and reporting that corporate tax directors often face from significant shareholders, nontax managers, and even themselves. Corporate tax privacy provides the government with valuable strategic defenses by restraining the ability of a corporation’s stakeholders and agents to engage in “benchmarking” and “reverse engineering,” behaviors that would likely cause some tax directors to pursue more aggressive tax planning and reporting. Yet, at the same time, increased public access to certain corporate tax return information could enable the public to participate in informed debate and discussion of the corporate tax law and to question whether the governments is applying the tax law to corporate taxpayers effectively and fairly.

Implicit Taxes Amid Race to the Bottom in a Global Tax Game

2020 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 42
Author(s):  
Igor Semenenko ◽  
Junwook Yoo ◽  
Parporn Akathaporn
Keyword(s):  
Capital Mobility ◽  
Tax Rates ◽  
Corporate Tax ◽  
Firm Level ◽  
Race To The Bottom ◽  
Tax Subsidy ◽  
Tax Subsidies ◽  
Level Data ◽  
Tax Returns ◽  
Tax Hypothesis

Growing tax competition among national governments in the presence of capital mobility distorts equilibrium in the international corporate tax market. This paper is related to the literature that examines impact of international tax policies on corporate accounting statements. Employing international firm-level data, this study revisits the race-to-the-bottom hypothesis and documents that tax exemptions lowering effective tax rates relative to statutory rates increase pre-tax returns. This finding directly contradicts the implicit tax hypothesis documented by Wilkie (1992), who provided empirical evidence on inverse relationship between pre-tax return and tax subsidy. We also find evidences that relative importance of permanent versus timing component depends on the geography and that decline in corporate tax rates reduces impact of tax subsidies on profitability. Our findings suggest that tax subsidies play a different role than in 1968-1985, which was examined by Wilkie (1992). These results are consistent with the race-to-the-bottom hypothesis and income shifting explanation

The Shareholder Response to Corporate Tax Planning Advice Regulation

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael P. Donohoe ◽  
Brian Gale ◽  
Michael Mayberry
Keyword(s):  
Tax Planning ◽  
Corporate Tax

Brewing Up Controversy: A Case Exploring the Ethics of Corporate Tax Planning

2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (4) ◽  
pp. 311-327 ◽  
Author(s):  
Megan F. Hess ◽  
Raquel Meyer Alexander
Keyword(s):  
Real World ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Tax Avoidance ◽  
Tax Planning ◽  
Learning Assessment ◽  
Class Discussion ◽  
Corporate Tax ◽  
Tax Havens ◽  
Multinational Organizations ◽  
The U.S

ABSTRACT This instructional case explores the ethical issues surrounding the corporate tax-planning and tax-avoidance strategies of multinational organizations. Drawing on the real-world experiences of SABMiller, one of the world's largest beverage companies, this case provides a launching point for students to consider the ethics of corporate tax planning. The ethics of multinational tax practices, especially the use of tax havens, has recently become the focus of media and legislative debate in both the U.S. and the U.K., and many well-respected companies, such as General Electric, Apple Inc., and Starbucks are now feeling the pressure to reform. In a post-case learning assessment, students demonstrated significant improvement in their understanding and indicated that they enjoyed discussing this controversial issue. The “Implementation Guidance” section and Teaching Notes offer guidance for in-class discussion of the ethical and tax issues in this case.

scholarly journals Research on the Role of Tax Planning in Preventing Corporate Tax Risks

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 156
Author(s):  
Yuting Guo ◽  
Qiuping Ouyang ◽  
Min Peng
Keyword(s):  
Business Process ◽  
Tax Planning ◽  
Business Development ◽  
Tax Burden ◽  
Corporate Tax ◽  
Laws And Regulations

<p>Paying taxes according to laws and regulations in the process of business development is an obligation of companies. It is a vital task for companies to reduce tax burden by reasonably applying laws, regulations and policies, which requires tax planning. This article explores the relevant contents of corporate tax planning and tax risks. Firstly, it briefly expounds tax risks and tax planning, then analyzes the causes of tax risks. Finally, the measures are put forward to avoid tax risks in the business process affecting the development of companies.</p>

scholarly journals Covid-19 and corporate tax avoidance: Measuring long-run tax burdens as an alternative bailout test

2021 ◽  
Vol 4 (3) ◽  
pp. 216-244
Author(s):  
Subagio Efendi
Keyword(s):  
Financial Aid ◽  
Income Tax ◽  
Tax Avoidance ◽  
Tax Compliance ◽  
Total Sample ◽  
Ordinary Least Squares ◽  
Corporate Tax ◽  
Long Run ◽  
Tax Returns ◽  
Avoidance Measures

This study fills the gap in the tax authority’s Covid-19 financial aid verifications by examining, and nominating, Long-run ETR (Dyreng et al., 2008) as the better corporate tax avoidance measure in excluding tax evader firms from the broad stimulus programs. Analysing confidential tax returns of 4,752 largest firms (32,120 firm-years) in Indonesia over 2009 to 2017 periods, this study found 18.12 percent of total sample firms is able to retain its Long-run ETR below 10 percent, which indicates continual tax avoidance activities by these firms during observation periods. Moreover, applying univariate and multivariate Ordinary Least Squares and Panel Data estimations, this study reveals, relative to other tax avoidance measures, Lagged Cash ETR (Lisowsky, 2010; Lisowsky et al., 2013) present the most consistent reliability in predicting long-run income tax burdens. Thus, this study asserts, in the conditions of computing Long-run ETR is costly and impractical (i.e. because of data unavailability), tax authority and policymakers can directly analyse firms’ Lagged Cash ETR to gauge their long-run income tax burdens and tax compliance behaviours prior the economic downturn. 

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