The Audit of Deferred Taxes as a Signal for Tax Auditors: Tax Compliance Implications for Private and Public Firms

Abstract

Using a tax compliance game, we study whether the observability of the taxpayer’s financial accounting information and the statutory auditor’s report affects the tax compliance. We find that firms’ responses differ significantly between private and public firms. Private firms compensate for the reported signals by understating both book and tax valuations. We find that introducing the informative signals does not necessarily increase efficiency. In fact, for private firms, it may also lead to lower tax revenues. For public firms, however, the positive effect of using the informative signals on tax compliance is much more pronounced. The usage of audit reports in addition to financial accounting statements always increases tax revenues from public firms. Regarding changes in book-tax conformity, we find that higher book-tax conformity can lead to higher tax revenues from public firms; however, tax revenues from private firms decrease with higher book-tax conformity.