비상장기업의 세무보고 공격성이 부채조달비용에 미치는 영향

This study investigates whether tax aggressiveness of unlisted firms affects the cost of debt financing in the debt capital market. Although previous studies analyze the relations between tax avoidance and firm value, these results are limited to listed firms. Unlike listed firms, unlisted firms are likely to have less capital market pressure with weak corporate governance such as small number of stakeholders and non-separation of ownership and control. Thus, it is worthwhile to examine how the debt market responds to corporate tax aggressiveness of unlisted firms and whether this response differs from that to tax avoidance of listed firms. This study uses a final sample consisting of all unlisted firms. To estimate corporate tax avoidance level of unlisted firms belonging to non-financial industry during 2009 and 2013, we first use two measurements based on Dyreng et al.(2008)：5-year cumulative cash effective tax rate (CASH ETR) and 5-year cumulative GAAP-based effective tax rate (GAAP ETR). Then, we partition the sample into quintiles based on each measure, CASH ETR and GAAP ETR., and define tax-aggressive firms as those in the lowest quintile (Donohoe and Knechel 2014). The major findings of this study are as follows. (1) After controlling for factors known to affect cost of debt financing, cost of debt appears to be lower for unlisted firms aggressively avoiding corporate taxes compared other unlisted firms, which is contrary to results of previous study by Kim and Cho (2012) which observes a positive relation between tax avoidance of listed firms and cost of debt. Our result implies that creditors in the debt market positively react to increases in cash flow of unlisted firms driven by tax avoidance, suggesting that creditors who penalize tax avoidance of listed firms do not consider agency cost related to tax aggressiveness of unlisted firms. (2) Additional analysis indicates that audit quality proxied by Big 4 audit firms does not influence the relation between tax avoidance of unlisted firms and cost of debt. To summarize, this study contributes to the current literature from the following perspectives. First, this is the first study which provides empirical evidence that creditors in the debt market respond positively to corporate tax aggressiveness of unlisted firms, which leads to a decline in cost of debt for such firms. Also, this study reveals that the relation between corporate tax avoidance and cost of debt is different across listed firms versus unlisted firms. Especially, we find that investors in the debt market reward the increased cash flows after tax from tax avoidance of unlisted firms rather than penalizing this action as opportunistic behavior of management and managerial actions that divert corporate resources for the manager’s private benefits (i.e., managerial rent diversion). These findings may provide additional evidence on the effect of tax avoidance of unlisted firms in the debt market to researchers in the academia as well as to other related parties such as the management of business corporations, investors, and policy makers.