Corporate Decision Structure and Tax Efficiency: Evidence From Tax Adjustment Speed
研究中国上市企业集团的决策结构（集权或分权）如何影响税收调整速度，发现集权结构能更快调整避税水平，提升税收效率，对投资者和管理层有参考价值。
ABSTRACT This paper examines the impact of allocation of decision rights (i.e., decision structure) on tax efficiency, reflected by the speed at which firms adjust toward their target levels of tax avoidance. Relying on a Chinese setting, we find that listed business groups with a centralized decision structure exhibit faster tax adjustment speed, relative to those with a decentralized structure. This baseline finding is robust to a series of sensitivity checks. Cross‐sectional analyses indicate that our main findings are conditional on external environment uncertainty, internal information quality, demand for coordination, tax enforcement, managers’ tax expertise, and board busyness. We also show that centralization is associated with higher tax efficiency scores. Overall, our research highlights the importance of decision structure for achieving tax efficiency and thus provides value‐relevant implications for stakeholders.