조세회피와 원가의 하방경직성

We investigated the relationship between tax avoidance and cost stickiness. Downward cost rigidity means that there is less reduction in cost when sales decrease than the increase in cost as sales increase. When sales decrease, the manager’s decision on internal resources depends on the benefits between adjustment costs and resource maintenance costs, and if the maintenance costs are determined to be lower of the two costs, the reduction in costs will be less likely when sales decrease. Tax avoidance, meanwhile, is a series of decisions by the firm to minimize the cash outflow from the tax burden, which results in an increase in the entity’s cash reserves. It would reduce the cost's downward rigidity because a reduction in current sales would be considered a temporary phenomenon and would result in a reduction in costs if managers were to cover maintenance costs with cash flows generated by tax avoidance. To examine this, a total of 12,641 firm-year data from 2002 to 2019 were used to verify the effect of tax avoidance on cost stickiness using Anderson et al.(2003)’s research model. According to the analysis, the level of tax avoidance decrease the cost stickiness. In addition, it was shown that tax avoidance mitigates the downward rigidity of costs if the debt level is low and the large shareholder share is high. This study has academic implications as it has expanded the study on the cost stickiness by examining the company’s tax plan on the asymmetry of cost and has confirmed its impact on the decision of internal resources of the firm according to the level of tax avoidance.