Empirical evidence on the impact of recent Korean tax reforms

This paper examines the effect of industry-wide factors such as product market competition on corporate tax avoidance. Specifically, the focus is on the moderating role of corporate governance in the relationship between product market competition and tax avoidance. To conduct an empirical analysis, a sample of public companies that are listed on the Korea Stock Exchange between 2001 and 2016 is used. The empirical analyses provide the following results. First, product market competition is negatively related to tax avoidance. This suggests that competitive markets act as external corporate governance mechanisms and discipline managers to decrease tax avoidance. Second, the negative association between product market competition and tax avoidance is more pronounced for firms with more independent board of directors and firms with audit committee consisting of outside directors. These findings imply that product market competition acts more effectively when the firm has strong internal governance mechanisms such as board independence and audit committee independence. Therefore, we provide evidence on a complementary relationship between internal governance system and product market competition. The results may be of interest to policy makers and regulators like Korea Fair Trade Commission and Financial Supervisory Service who are involved in promoting market competition, monitoring any abuse of market dominance, and supervising financial reporting quality.

The purpose of this study is to empirically investigate the effect of financial constraints and corporate governance as moderating variables on the determinants of tax avoidance, which includes foreign activity, corporate social responsibility, and political connections. All companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange from 2017 to 2019 are the objects of this study. The panel data regression was used to address the research question. The findings show that foreign activity, corporate social responsibility, and political connections significantly affected tax avoidance with alpha 5%. The results also show that corporate governance can reduce the positive impact of foreign activity, corporate social responsibility, and political connection on tax avoidance with alpha 1%.
Moreover, financial constraints may strengthen the positive impact of corporate social responsibility on tax avoidance with alpha 5%. The findings further provide empirical evidence about one of the strategies businesses use to conduct tax avoidance, notably foreign activity, corporate social responsibility, and political connection. Thus, companies that implement good corporate governance could reduce corporate tax avoidance acts, which can harm the company’s image and lead to a decrease in company value. This study discovered a new proxy for measuring financial constraints, as well as developments in the political connection.

This study examines the effect of labor unions on corporate tax avoidance activities. Labor union is an important stakeholder in terms of corporate governance; thus, managers may engage in certain accounting choices that reflect union members’ position to improve the relation with labor union. This paper empirically investigates whether managers engage in tax avoidance activities to secure financial resources for workers’ pay when the negotiation power of labor unions is higher. The empirical analysis is based on a sample of firms listed in the Korean stock market from 2001 to 2008. The authors find that companies, where labor unions are organized, have a significantly higher level of tax avoidance activities. Also, the authors attempt to examine the effect of labor unions’ bargaining power on tax avoidance. While the union membership ratio is not significantly related to tax avoidance, labor unions that belong to upper-level labor organizations significantly affect the increasing tax avoidance activity, on average. Moreover, companies that join an aggressive labor organization (‘Minju’ Federation) show a significantly higher level of tax avoidance activity, compared to those joining a moderate labor organization (‘Hanguk’ Federation). Furthermore, the authors show that such an effect of labor unions on tax avoidance is significant for companies, which are not affiliated with large business groups (‘chaebols’). This result suggests that chaebol group management is not under pressure to negotiate with union members due to higher reputation costs. The findings of this paper offer academic and practical implications that capital market participants need to understand labor unions’ effect on management’s accounting choices.