Auditor quality and tax management: evidence from Tunisian companies

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to study the impact of the auditor quality on the tax management. We apprehend the auditor quality by some attributes of the independence and the competence such as auditor tenure, audit firm size, experience and auditor industry specialist. From a sample of 45 Tunisian companies over the period 2001-2010, our results support the hypothesis of positive and significant relationship between the auditor industry specialist, the auditors experience and the tax management, consistent with the auditor competence that constitutes a determining factor of the tax optimisation. Although, we found that auditor's Big, national brand name auditors and audit tenure limit sensibly tax management. Concerning the control variables, we find that firm size and debt have a negative and significant impact on the tax management.