股权质押、控制权转移风险与税收规避

Controlling Shareholder's Shares Pledge,the Risk of Losing Control Rights and Tax Avoidance

控股股东股权质押背景下的税收规避可以实质地改善业绩,有利于抑制控制权转移风险。研究发现:(1)控股股东进行股权质押的上市公司更可能税收规避,说明控股股东有动机利用税收规避抑制控制权转移风险。(2)股权质押对税收规避的正向效应只存在于非国有企业组、企业地处东部组、控股股东持股比例较低组以及股价下跌较明显组,这些组的控制权转移风险越大,公司越可能税收规避。(3)股权质押对税收规避的正向效应只存在于低掏空组、低融资约束组以及向上真实盈余管理组,从而排除了掏空、融资约束以及向上真实盈余管理对本文结论的的替代解释。(4)股权质押对税收规避的正向效应只存在于董事会规模较小组、独立董事比例较低组、管理费用率较低组、高资产周转率组以及其他应收款较低组,说明灵活、低代理成本的治理结构能统一控制权私利与公司利益,从而强化了股权质押对税收规避的正面效应。本文研究有助于丰富股权质押以及税收规避文献。

Shares pledge is a phenomenon in which a controlling shareholder （insider） uses his or her shares as collateral in a personal loan. Taking advantage of the shares pledge, the controlling shareholder can diversify his or her investments. Thus, the shares pledge has become popular across the globe. However, this pledge may result in a margin call against the insider, which may cause the controlling shareholder to lose control of the firm. That the controlling shareholder chooses to pledge his or her shares rather than sell them indicates that he or she is reluctant to lose control of the firm. Moreover, compared with the benefits the shares pledge brings, the controlling shareholder can get more from the control of the listed company. Obviously, the controlling shareholder will conduct activities to protect his or her control after pledging his shares. Studies have reported that the controlling shareholder＇s opportunistic behavior is more acute within the pledge because he or she has incentives to direct firm activities to protect his or her control rights after the pledge, such as information manipulation and real earnings management. However, information manipulation can only blind investors temporarily. Meanwhile, the real earnings management leads the firm to pay more tax, which weakens the effect of the real earnings management on boosting the stock price. Moreover, real earnings management destroys the firm value in the long term. Hence, information manipulation and real earnings management are not effective at boosting the stock price and they alone cannot help the insider to protect his control rights. In contrast, tax avoidance transfers wealth from the government to firms and leaves more resources available for the firms to put into operation, which can truly enhance the firms＇ value. Although an insider may take advantage of tax avoidance as shelter to pursue his or her personal interests, doing so is not in the interest of the insider when he or she pledges his or her shares. If the insider takes advantage of tax avoidance to pursue his or her personal interests, he or she will damage the firm＇s value and increase the firm＇s crash risk, resulting in a margin call and even perhaps a loss of his or her control rights. Thus, the insider will direct the firm to engage in tax avoidance activities to increase the firm＇s value rather than pursue his or her personal interest. In this study, we arrived at the following findings. （1） Firms with controlling shareholders pledging their shares engage in more tax avoidance. （2） If the controlling shareholders face a higher risk of losing control rights, such as non- SOE controlling shareholders, located in the eastern part of China, the controlling shareholders have a lower equity ratio in a bear market period; the firm faces a higher crash risk and then engages in more tax avoidance activities. （3） The positive relationship between the shares pledge and tax avoidance only exists in the lower tunneling firms, lower financial constraints firms, and upward real earrings management firms. （4） The positive relationship between the shares pledge and tax avoidance only exists in firms with a smaller board size, lower proportion of independent directors, lower ratio of management expense, higher asset turnover ratio, and lower other receivables. This study makes several contributions to the literature. First, we document the economic consequence of the insiders＇ shares pledge on tax avoidance, advancing the small but growing literature on the shares pledge. Second, we advance the tax avoidance literature by providing a shares pledging explanation for tax avoidance in addition to the common agency theory framework. Third, our findings have policy implications for tax administration. That is, when a firm has the controlling shareholders＇ shares pledge, it will be more aggressive in tax avoidance. Thus, increasing the tax monitoring by a tax authority should be considered.