Taxes and Financial Constraints: Evidence from Linguistic Cues
研究发现，年报中使用更多负面词汇的财务约束企业会采取更激进的避税策略，包括提高未确认税收优惠、降低有效税率、增加避税天堂使用和面临更多审计调整。语言线索能比传统会计指标更好地预测避税行为。
ABSTRACT Using a new measure of financial constraints based on firms’ qualitative disclosures, we find that financially constrained firms—firms that use more negative words in their annual reports—pursue more aggressive tax planning strategies as evidenced by: (1) higher current and future unrecognized tax benefits, (2) lower short‐ and long‐run current and future effective tax rates, (3) increase in tax haven usage for their material operations, and (4) higher proposed audit adjustments from the Internal Revenue Service. We exploit the unexpected closures of local banks as exogenous liquidity shocks to show that firms’ external financial constraints affect their tax avoidance strategies. Overall, the linguistic cues in firms’ qualitative disclosures provide incremental information beyond traditional accounting variables or commonly used effective tax rates to reveal and predict tax aggressiveness, both contemporaneously and in the future.