Geographical Dispersion And Tax Avoidance

With the development of economy and the advancement of marketization,the phenomenon of regional expansion of enterprises is becoming more and more common.Geographically dispersed development of enterprises is not only an important trend in the growth process of enterprises,but also a key link in the diversification strategy of enterprises.As an important enterprise characteristic,enterprise geographical dispersion will have an impact on enterprise management and decision-making.In the existing literature,scholars have found the impact of geographical dispersion on enterprise value,debt financing,external audit,cash dividend distribution,earnings management and analysts’ prediction,but few literatures involve the field of enterprise tax avoidance.Therefore,based on the overall government theory,stakeholder theory and information asymmetry theory,this thesis analyzes the relationship between geographical dispersion and enterprise tax avoidance.Due to the high linkage of tax supervision in various regions under the mode of domestic tax big data supervision,the higher the geographical dispersion of enterprises,the higher the degree of multiple supervision of local tax authorities and the lower the degree of tax avoidance.At the same time,the geographical dispersion of enterprises improves the communication cost between the parent company and local governments,reduces the efficiency of communication,makes it difficult for the enterprise group as a whole to obtain relevant information from local tax authorities in time,makes tax planning more difficult and reduces the degree of tax avoidance.In addition,enterprises with higher geographical dispersion have a wider market and higher awareness,so they will receive more attention and supervision from investors,the media and the public,resulting in a reduction in the degree of tax avoidance.Based on the above considerations,this thesis selects the data of all A-share listed companies from 2008 to 2019 as samples,uses the measurement methods of Garcia and Norli and Shi et al.For reference to measure the geographical dispersion of enterprises,and studies the impact of geographical dispersion of enterprises on tax avoidance.The empirical results show that there is a significant negative correlation between the geographical dispersion of enterprises and the degree of tax avoidance,that is,the higher the geographical dispersion,the lower the degree of tax avoidance.After passing the endogenous test and robustness test,the conclusion is still valid.In the further test part,this thesis explores the impact of geographical dispersion on enterprise tax avoidance in different external environments from three aspects: external audit environment,analyst attention and tax supervision intensity.The results show that when enterprises face lower external audit quality,less analyst attention and lower tax supervision intensity,The stronger the inhibition of enterprise geographical dispersion on enterprise tax avoidance.The innovation of this thesis lies in the improvement of the research on the influencing factors of corporate tax avoidance and the enrichment of empirical research experience on the geographical dispersion of enterprises.Although the current academic research on corporate tax avoidance is relatively comprehensive,few literatures pay attention to the impact of geographical factors.This thesis focuses on the difference of geographical dispersion among listed companies and studies its impact on tax avoidance,which provides a new research perspective and theoretical explanation for the cross-study of geographical factors and tax avoidance,and also makes up for the gap in the field of geographical dispersion of enterprises in China.