Public Disclosure of Tax Strategies and Firm’s Actual Tax Policy
研究了英国上市公司在公开税收策略中如何自我定位（负责任纳税人还是税务规划者），并检验这种定位是否与实际税收规避行为一致。结果发现，仅在分析师外部监督较强时，自我定位才反映真实行为，表明企业可能操纵定性披露以影响公众舆论。
We use a sample of 248 tax strategies published by U.K. companies listed on the Financial Times Stock Exchange (FTSE) 100 and FTSE 250 to examine (a) how companies present themselves—more as “responsible taxpayers” who view taxes as a meaningful contribution to society, or more as “tax planners” who view taxes primarily as a cost, and (b) whether these presentations correspond to actual tax avoidance behavior. Our results show that, on average, firms tend to portray themselves as “responsible taxpayers,” but that this portrayal is consistent with firms’ tax avoidance behavior only when firms are subject to above-average external monitoring by financial analysts. The results suggest that firms manage the content of qualitative tax disclosures to sway public opinion as long as the probability of detecting misstatements is sufficiently low. This raises doubts as to whether mandatory qualitative information provides added value for stakeholders if it is not under external review.