Impact of executive compensation on corporate tax aggressiveness: evidence from India

Abstract

PurposeThere is growing empirical evidence in context of the developed countries that greater tax aggressiveness of companies is associated with higher incentives to their executives. However, the same cannot be extended to emerging economies like India due to their distinct compensation practices. The present study, therefore, aims to bridge this gap by exploring the relationship between executive compensation and corporate tax aggressiveness in context of the Indian economy.Design/methodology/approachThe sample comprises a subset of the S&P BSE 500 Index companies for FY 2014–15 through 2018–19. A fixed effects panel model has been used to discern the impact of executive compensation on corporate tax aggressiveness with and without the moderating effect of a proxy for corporate governance strength.FindingsThe econometric analysis evinces a significant negative impact of the fixed executive compensation on tax aggressiveness, specifically with the moderation of corporate governance strength which was found to have a positive effect on the said relation. In addition, no significant relationship was observed between variable compensation and tax aggressiveness. These results were robust to an alternate specification of the corporate governance strength proxy as well as the system generalised method of moments estimation employed to deal with endogeneity.Originality/valueThe study provides insights on a poor interest alignment between shareholders and managers in India owing to an insignificant amount of variable pay in the total executive compensation.