客户信息披露会影响企业税收规避吗

Will Customer Information Disclosure Affect Corporate Tax Avoidance

自愿披露客户信息的企业数量持续增长,已有研究多关注自愿披露影响因素,并未充分探讨自愿披露对企业行为的影响。本文以2008-2018年A股上市公司为研究样本,从税收规避的视角,实证检验了客户信息披露对企业行为的影响和作用机制。研究发现,随着客户信息披露详细程度的增加,企业会显著降低自身税收规避,而且政府客户的存在亦能显著降低企业税收规避。进一步分析发现,自愿性客户信息披露能够通过降低信息不对称缓解融资约束和增加分析师跟踪数量来降低企业税收规避程度。本文的结论验证了客户信息这种特殊的自愿性披露内容对企业行为的影响,为鼓励企业自愿披露客户信息,完善信息环境,减少税收规避提供了一定的参考依据。

The number of firms voluntarily disclosing customer information continues to grow, but most studies have focused on the factors influencing voluntary disclosure and have not fully explored the impact of voluntary disclosure on firm behavior. Theoretically, the management pursuing maximum value is motivated to provide customer information to investors regardless of other factors, and the more detailed it is, the better it is for reducing internal and external information asymmetry. Customer information closure is conducive to the effectiveness of capital markets. Numerous studies have shown that firms voluntarily disclose financial and non-financial information to increase stock liquidity and analyst following to reduce financing costs. Customer information disclosure, which is an important part of non-financial information disclosure, should have a similar effect of reducing financing costs, so firms will tend to disclose customer information in as much detail as possible. In reality, this is not the case, and there are still a significant number of firms that only disclose customer information as required. Among the firms in this paper, 22.99% of them only disclose the required information. The reason for this situation is that due to the existence of proprietary costs, firms are worried that the disclosure of customer details will put them at a great risk of losing customers, so they only disclose the required information and do not meet the encouragement of the China Securities Regulatory Commission(CSRC) to disclose the names or sales amounts of the top five customers of listed firms. Some firms will voluntarily disclose the sales or names of each customer on the basis of the required disclosure, taking into account the encouraging information from the SEC. What is the reaction of outsiders to these two types of firms? How does this reaction affect corporate behavior? Does tax avoidance, which is one of the corporate behaviors of this paper, have different outcomes due to different customer disclosures and different outsiders’ reactions? This paper focuses on the impact of customer information disclosure on corporate tax avoidance through the impact of outsiders’ reactions to corporate behavior, which has not been explored in previous studies.Typically, non-disclosure of firm information raises adverse inferences about firms, and investors may perceive information about a firm with only regulatory disclosure to be the worst compared with a firm with regulatory and voluntary disclosure. For firms that only disclose customer information on a regulatory basis, outsiders may believe that firms’ customers are more important to their sales revenue,and cash flow. They may also believe that the likelihood of losing customers is higher, which is why they do everything they can to avoid customer-specific information disclosure so as to send several signals to outsiders.(1) A firm’s loss of such customers increases the risk of sales revenue, cash flow, and other risks.(2) Significant customers can lead to lower corporate bargaining power.(3) Firms need to make relationship-specific investments to retain customers. Firms that voluntarily disclose customer information also send several signals to the outside world.(1) The risk of losing customers is low.(2) Even if customers are lost, it does not significantly increase risks like sales revenue, and cash flow.(3) Higher quality of disclosed customers also represents these customers’ recognition of the value of the concerning firm.(4) The more stable customers indicate that the security of firms is recognized by the market.This paper examines the impact of customer information disclosure on tax avoidance with A-share listed firms from 2008 to 2018 as sample. It is found that the reduction effect of voluntary customer information disclosure on tax avoidance is stronger than that of regulatory customer information disclosure. The reduction effect is strengthened with the deepening of the disclosure, and this effect on tax avoidance is further strengthened when the disclosed customers include the government. In further analysis, customer information disclosure constrains tax avoidance through the mediating effects of financing constraints and analyst following. The findings hold after a series of robustness tests.The findings of this paper have important implications. This paper sorts out the micromechanism of the role of customer information disclosure and provides new support for Chinese academic community on the influencing factors of tax avoidance. Overall, disclosure of customer information can help improve the internal and external information environment of firms, enrich the information source channels for investors, and add to the role of improving the capital market. One of the important reasons for the current prevalence of tax avoidance among Chinese firms is the financing constraint due to information asymmetry. Therefore, in order to improve this situation,on the one hand, we should ensure the standard of the required information disclosure and emphasize the punitive measures for firms that fail to disclose the required information. On the other hand, China should guide the voluntary disclosure of customer information, and improve the incentives(such as preferential financing, and taxation) and supporting facilities for the voluntary disclosure of customer information. China should stimulate the incentive of disclosure for firms in a position to do so, make customer information play an auxiliary role in decision-making of investors and other outsiders, and reduce tax avoidance of listed firms. The findings of this paper indicate that further voluntary disclosure of customer information has a stronger binding effect on tax avoidance on the basis of regulatory disclosure,which is conducive to our comprehensive understanding of the impact of voluntary customer information disclosure on tax avoidance and has important implications for the CSRC’s policy of encouraging voluntary customer information disclosure at this stage. According to existing relevant guidelines, firms are forced to disclose the total number of sales and percentage of the top five customers, and the disclosure of names of customers is mainly encouraged, which shows that the disclosure requirements of the SEC on names of customers are still in the exploratory stage. From the conclusion of this paper, voluntary disclosure of customer information(customer names, etc.) can strongly restrain tax avoidance of firms. Considering that corporate tax avoidance can aggravate the government’s fiscal deficit and distort the allocation of public resources, it is imperative to further introduce relevant policies to regulate and compel firms to disclose more customer information.