预算软约束、债务契约与公司避税

Soft budget constraint, debt covenants, and corporate tax avoidance

根据"有效税收筹划"分析框架,公司避税需要权衡税收收益与非税收成本之间的关系。基于公司债务契约引起的非税收成本,本文首先检验债务违约成本是否会影响公司的避税行为,在此基础上,结合我国资本市场的特点,进一步检验预算软约束对债务违约成本与公司避税之间关系的影响。实证检验结果表明:伴随总债务水平提高,公司避税程度显著下降,反映公司避税需要权衡税收收益与债务违约成本之间的关系,债务违约成本提高会抑制公司的避税行为;与非国有企业相比,国有企业总债务水平与避税程度之间的负向关系被削弱,反映国有企业面临的预算软约束会显著降低债务违约成本对避税活动的抑制作用;区分债务期限使用短期债务和长期债务水平进行检验下,上述研究结论依旧不变。本文的研究发现不仅提供了公司避税影响因素方面的经验证据,有助于揭示"公司避税不足之谜",而且为理解我国企业的税收实践提供参考依据,对政策制定者和税收监管部门具有借鉴意义。

Tax avoidance is significant and common for firms around the world.Researchers from economics,accounting,finance law and other fields have given much attention to determinants and economic consequences of tax avoidance(Hanlon and Heitzman,2010);However,there are still some unsolved puzzles in theory and practice,such as the“under-sheltering puzzle”(Weisbach,2002).As shown in Weisbach(2002),US firms were not as keen on tax avoidance as expected,and they may not seek to avoid tax even under safer circumstances or with lower costs.An important question is why these firms are under-sheltered.Based on the effective tax planning framework proposed by Scholes et al.(2002),firms need to make a trade-off between tax benefits and non-tax cost when taking tax avoidance activities.As a result,the non-tax cost might restrain tax avoidance activities.Under this framework,a series of empirical studies support their arguments.The non-tax costs come from firms’explicit and implicit contracts,in which debt contracts are important one.Firms have to sign debt contracts with banks to acquire external capital.Restrictive clauses are necessary in these contracts in order to reduce moral hazard.If firms default,they will bear penalty cost.When penalty cost is excessively high,the firms may suffer bankruptcy.This paper argues that debt default costs will affect tax avoidance in the following ways.First,debt default costs may constrain firms’behaviors of reporting lower profits.When a firm tries to minimize tax burden by tax avoidance,the reported profit or equity might be lower due to the book-tax confirmity.In anticipating the possible debt default costs due to the decline of the profit or equity,the firm will be less tax aggressive.Second,debt default costs will affect a firm’risk-taking behaviors.Myers(1997)finds that debt financing affects a firm's optimal investment strategy.The increase of debt would reduce the incentives of shareholders and managers to engage in the investment opportunities which could produce positive present value.Because tax avoidance could be treated as one kind of risky investment activities.Thus,this risky behavior would be limited due to the debt defaults costs.Based on the above two ways,this paper argues that the increase of debt level,related to higher default risk,will lead to firms’less tax aggressiveness.Based on the“soft budget constraint”phenomenon(Kornai,1986;Lin and Liu,2004)in the socialist market economy,this paper further analyzes how soft budget constraint affects the relationship between debt contract and tax avoidance.In terms of corporate tax avoidance,the existence of soft budget constraint will affect the restrain power of the debt contracts.On the one hand,as given the same debt level,the possibility and risk of debt default for State-owned-enterprises(hereafter SOEs)with soft budget constraint might be lower.On the other hand,managers in SOEs will care less about debt default costs due to the soft budget constraint.Through the above two ways,the negative relationship between the debt level and tax aggressiveness would be weakened for SOEs due to the soft budget constraint.In order to test the above theoretical predictions,this paper employs the tax aggressiveness variable developed by Desai and Dharmapala(2006)and takes Chinese listed companies as the research sample.The empirical results suggest that with the increase of debt level,the aggressiveness of a firm becomes lower.This finding suggests that a firm need to make a trade-off between tax benefits and non-tax costs generated by the debt contracts.The conclusions hold constant when using short-term and long-term measures of debt instead of the total debt level.Compared with non-SOEs,the negative relationship between the total debt level and tax aggressiveness is weakened for SOEs.The conclusions also hold constant when using the short-term and long-term measures of debt.These findings not only enrich the academic literature under the framework regarding the non-tax costs and tax avoidance developed by Scholes et al.(2002),but also contribute to revealing the“under-sheltering puzzle”(Weisbach,2002).In addition,these findings also help us better understand the tax practice,and provide references for policymakers and tax authorities.