Governance or reputation?Flexible tax enforcement and excess goodwill:Evidence from the taxpaying credit rating system in China

This study investigates the effect of flexible tax enforcement on firms’excess goodwill using unique manually collected data on taxpaying credit rating in China from 2014 to 2021.We document that A-rated taxpayer firms have less excess goodwill;A-rated firms reduce excess goodwill by 0.005 vis-a-vis non-Arated firms,which accounts for 100%of the mean value of excess goodwill.This finding holds after multiple robustness tests and an endogeneity analysis.Moreover,this negative effect is more pronounced in firms with low information transparency,that are non-state-owned and that are located in regions with low tax enforcement intensity.The channel test results suggest that taxpaying credit rating system as flexible tax enforcement reduces firms’excess goodwill through a reputation-based effect and not a governance-based effect.This study reveals that the taxpaying credit rating system in China as flexible tax enforcement can bring halo effect to A rating firms,thereby limiting irrational M&As and breaking goodwill bubble.

A self-employed taxpayer experimental study on trust,power,and tax compliance in eleven countries

The slippery slope framework explains tax compliance along two main dimensions,trust in authorities and power of authorities,which influence taxpayers’compliance attitudes.Through frequentist and Bayesian analyses,we investigated the framework’s assumptions on a sample of 2786 self-employed taxpayers from eleven post-communist and non-post-communist countries doing business in five economic branches.After using scenarios that experimentally manipulated trust and power,our results confirmed the framework’s assumptions regarding the attitudes of the self-employed taxpayers;trust and power fostered intended tax compliance and diminished tax evasion,trust boosted voluntary tax compliance,whereas power increased enforced tax compliance.Additionally,self-employed taxpayers from post-communist countries reported higher intended tax compliance and lower tax evasion than those from non-post-communist countries.Our results offer tax authorities insights into how trust and power may contribute to obtaining and maintaining high tax compliance levels amid global economic challenges,downturns,and increasing tax compliance costs.