The effect of chief financial officers’ accounting expertise on corporate tax avoidance: the role of compensation design

Ming-Chin Chen, Chia-Wen Chang () and Mei-Chueh Lee
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Ming-Chin Chen: National Chengchi University
Chia-Wen Chang: Ming Chuan University
Mei-Chueh Lee: Takming University of Science and Technology

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, 2020, vol. 54, issue 1, No 9, 273-296

Abstract: Abstract Accounting expertise is closely related to corporate tax planning, and hence, corporate chief financial officers (CFOs) with accounting expertise may have advantages in exploiting tax planning opportunities. By manually collecting CFOs’ autobiographic information and identifying their accounting-related work experience, we empirically examine whether a CFO with accounting expertise is more likely than a CFO without such expertise to exploit tax planning opportunities, resulting in greater corporate tax avoidance. We find that CFOs with accounting expertise are negatively associated with corporate effective tax rates. The average effective tax rate of firms with accounting expert CFOs is approximately 19.4% lower than that of their counterparts with non-accounting expert CFOs, ceteris paribus. Moreover, the abnormal variable compensation of CFOs with accounting expertise is negatively associated with corporate effective tax rates. The results suggest that the accounting expertise and compensation schemes of CFOs can have a significant effect on the aggressiveness of corporate tax planning.

Keywords: Tax avoidance; Effective tax rate; Compensation design; Chief financial officer (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H26 J33 M41 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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DOI: 10.1007/s11156-019-00789-5

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