Managing Annual Accounting Reports to Avoid State Taxes: An Analysis of Property-Casualty Insurers
研究发现财产责任保险公司通过年度会计报告中的保费分配来减少州税，保费损失率与州税率负相关，且多州业务线公司更明显。
We hypothesize that, in their annual accounting reports, propertycasualty insurers allocate premiums from multistate policies to reduce total state taxes. To test this prediction, we exploit the industry's unique state tax disclosures. We examine firm-level data, collected from the publicly available, statutory reports filed with each state government. Reported premiums at the insurer-state level, scaled by incurred losses, are regressed on state tax measures. Consistent with tax-motivated income shifting, we find the premiumloss ratio is decreasing in state tax rates. The negative relation is greatest for insurers specializing in multistate lines of business.