비감사서비스 제공 여부와 회계이익과 과세소득 차이의 관련성 분석―가족기업을 중심으로―

Family Firm is a common form of ownership around the world. Numerous studies report that controlling families have power over their firms significantly in excess of their cash flow rights. In this study, I examine the tax aggressiveness of family firms, relative to their non-family counterparts. A family firm is likely to face different types of agency problems from a non-family firm. Compared to non-family firms, family firms face less severe agency problem due to the separation of ownership and management, but more severe agency problems that arise between controlling and non- controlling shareholders. Family ownership and control is dominant among publicly traded firms throughout the world. Few studies, however, have researched for family firms in Korea. Using a book-tax difference measure, developed by Desai and Dharmapala(2006), to capture tax aggressiveness, we find that a family firm is less tax aggressive than a non-family firm in Korea. This result suggests that family owners are willing to forgo tax benefits in order to avoid the non-tax cost of a potential penalty and reputation damage. Our results are consistent with prior studies’ findings that overall, family entrenchment is not a serious concern in Korean family firms, like in U.S. family firms(Anderson and Reeb, 2003；Wang, 2006；Ali et al., 2007). As for characteristics of a family firm, I finds that a family firm which has a higher tax burden, big4 auditors, or higher outside directors is more tax aggressive. Our results suggest that family firms with high quality of audit service are provided with a high level of tax planning.