The Study On The Effect And Determinants Of Small - And Medium-Sized Entities Conducting Tax Avoidance

Abstract

SME often lack the capacity to keep transparency in management due to a small number of information users. Thus, the adoption of K-IFRS can be burdensome to numerous SME, which led to the enactment of Accounting Standards for Small- and Medium-sized Entities (AS-SME). AS-SME allows the accountants to easily implement accounting rules when writing financial statements and the users to comprehend useful information. SME hold less tax burden since they receive a tax deduction and exemption from the Tax Act. Thus, we conjecture that the financial determinants of tax avoidance between SME and non-SME will differ. We divide the total sample according to the corporate tax avoidance and empirically examine whether the difference actually exists. Our sample consists 18,954 audited firms including those external audited from 2011 to 2013. This study implements BTD, the difference between accounting profit and taxable income and estimated corporate tax avoidance (TS), which is the part that cannot be explained by total accruals in BTD to proxy for tax avoidance. (Desai and Dharmapala 2006). We summarize our findings as below: there is a significant distinction between SME and non-SME regarding the related financial determinants. The result shows that firm size (SIZE), profitability (ROA), leverage (LEV), operating cash flow(CFO), capital intensity (PPE), R&D intensity (RNDS), and growth rate (GS) all influence the corporate tax avoidance of SME. Our result also suggests that there is variation in the determinants among the SME with high corporate tax avoidance. The attempt to investigate the financial determinants of the tax avoidance in SME can be a barometer of the effectiveness of AS-SME, which is enacted to lessen the tax burden of the SME. We intend to provide policy implication regarding SME subsidy by examining the motive for corporate tax avoidance in SME.