Heterogeneity Of Institutional Investors,Audit Quality And Corporate Tax Avoidance

Taxation is the main source of national finance,and stable taxation is the basis for the government to perform its duties.For enterprises,tax payment is a burden of enterprises,tax avoidance has become an important means to reduce the burden of enterprises.As an important participant in the capital market,institutional investors have the advantages of capital and expertise,and have the conditions to participate in corporate governance.With the gradual abolition of QFII restrictions by the Chinese government and the continuous introduction of more medium and long-term funds into the market,institutional investors have attracted extensive attention in the capital market.At present,academia has constructed a comparatively perfect research system on factors influencing tax avoidance in enterprises from the aspects of tax collection and management,property right nature and executive characteristics.Institutional investors are the external factors affecting tax avoidance of enterprises,but the current research on the impact of institutional investors on tax avoidance of enterprises regards institutional investors as a whole,ignoring the differences in the independence of institutional investors and the duration of shareholding.The heterogeneity of institutional investors will affect their behavior of participating in corporate governance and the effect of participating in corporate governance.Therefore,it is of great significance to study the impact of institutional investors on corporate tax avoidance from the perspective of heterogeneity.Based on the heterogeneity of institutional investors,this paper explores the impact of institutional investors on corporate tax avoidance,and further investigates the regulatory role of audit quality on the relationship between the two.Based on the A-share listed companies from 2008 to 2016,this paper draws the following conclusions:(1)As an important external supervision mechanism,institutional investors can significantly inhibit tax avoidance.The higher the proportion of institutional investors,the lower the degree of tax avoidance.(2)Different types of institutional investors have different effects on corporate tax avoidance.Compared with non-independent institutional investors,independent institutional investors have stronger inhibition effect on corporate tax avoidance;compared with transactional institutional investors,stable institutional investors have stronger inhibition effect on corporate tax avoidance.(3)The restraining effect of institutional investors on corporate tax avoidance varies under different auditing and supervision environments.The restraining effect of institutional investors on tax avoidance is more significant in enterprises with poor audit quality,which indicates that both institutional investors and audit supervision are important external supervision mechanisms,and they have substitution effect.(4)For different types of institutional investors,there are significant differences in the above-mentioned regulatory role of audit quality.Compared with non-independent institutional investors,the restraint effect of independent institutional investors on corporate tax avoidance is more significant in enterprises with poor audit quality;compared with transactional institutional investors,the restraint effect of stable institutional investors on corporate tax avoidance is more significant in enterprises with poor audit quality.(5)This paper further examines the economic consequences of institutional investors' restraint on corporate tax avoidance,and finds that institutional investors enhance corporate value by restraining corporate tax avoidance,but the above value effects only exist in independent institutional investors and stable institutional investors.The main theoretical contributions of this paper are:(1)enriching and expanding the research on the influencing factors of corporate tax avoidance.Institutional investors are an important factor affecting corporate tax avoidance.Based on previous studies,this paper studies the impact of institutional investors on corporate tax avoidance from the perspective of heterogeneity.(2)It enriches and expands the research on the governance effect of institutional investors.At present,the research on the governance effect of institutional investors generally regards institutional investors as a whole.Based on this,this paper studies the differences of the governance effect of institutional investors from the perspective of heterogeneity.The practical contributions of this paper are as follows:(1)It is of great significance to improve the efficiency of tax supervision.Government departments can consider the heterogeneity of institutional investors in the process of supervision,which can improve the efficiency of tax supervision.(2)It is of great significance for the government to guide the development of institutional investors scientifically.Different types of institutional investors participate in corporate governance behavior is different,the government can focus on the development of institutional investors who can actively participate in corporate governance.