종속회사 및 해외자회사 보유가 연결기업실체의 조세부담 수준에 미치는 영향

An increasing number of researchers have been paying interest to the issue of tax avoidance using related parties and foreign subsidiaries. However, empirical research focusing on the effect of the tax strategies at the level of the entire company group is sparse. In this regard, this study examines the influence of holding subordinate affiliates and foreign subsidiaries on the net tax burden for the company group, utilizing the detailed information on subsidiary companies that has been available on the footnote of the consolidated financial statements since the adoption of the International Financial Reporting Standards. The primary test results show that the corporate tax burden as measures in terms of the cash effective tax rate is higher for firms with subordinate companies and higher share of the subsidiaries’ asset in the total firm assets, but not significantly associated with the related-party transactions. This result indicates that the expansive holding of subsidiaries contributes to increasing the tax burden for the entire company group, rather than reducing its overall tax payment by way of income transfer between related parties. Within the sample of firms with subsidiaries, the share of foreign subsidiaries’ assets in the total firm assets is significantly positively related to the cash effective tax rate, which implies that the positive association between the total tax burden and the subsidiary holding is mainly attributed to holding foreign subsidiaries. Additional analysis results present no significant relationship between the entire corporate tax burden and the country characteristics for the foreign subsidiaries including the corporate statutory tax rate and the GDP growth, accordingly implying the possibility that the taxation system for the foreign-source income, not the individual foreign country characteristics, can be a critical factor of driving the results. This study expands the prior literature by investigating the net effect of tax strategies from the perspective of the entire company group and provides new empirical evidence on the tax effect of international strategies through foreign subsidiaries, further highlighting the need of improving the tax policy measure to induce the foreign-reserved corporate income back to Korea.