Private firms’ tax aggressiveness and lightweight pre-tax-audit interventions by the tax administration
研究了芬兰税务机关在私营企业提交纳税申报后立即进行的轻量级干预如何影响企业的税收激进行为，发现这种干预能有效抑制过度激进的避税行为。
This study examines private companies’ tax aggressiveness and its changes in response to interventions by the government tax administration. While scholars have researched authorities’ interventions extensively, this study is the first to consider the “light” technique of tax adjustments made by the tax administration immediately after the firm submits its tax return. We utilized a large-scale proprietary dataset obtained from Finland’s tax administration (covering 85,155 firm–years), the hypotheses addressed the relationship between the firm’s level of tax aggressiveness and the tax-administration intervention (H1) and that between the intervention and companies’ response to it (H2). The empirical findings support both hypotheses. Its lightweight nature notwithstanding, the pre-tax-audit intervention can serve as a tool for ameliorating firms’ overly tax-aggressive behavior. Finally, we present management implications that should be of interest to tax administrations and regulatory authorities, related to the potential effectiveness of a tax administration’s monitoring processes in mitigating the tax aggressiveness of private companies.