기업수명주기와 조세회피：현금흐름패턴을 중심으로

[Purpose] The main purpose of this paper is to examine whether the tax avoidance of firm dependent on the firm life cycle based on Dickinson (2011)’s cashflow pattern. Prior literature on determinants of the tax avoidance, most studies that primarily investigate whether fundamental firm characteristics, general corporate governance and ownership structures etc affects the tax avoidance. [Methodology] This paper hypothesize that the introduction and growth stage in the firms’ life cycle exhibit significantly higher levels of firms’ tax avoidance than firms with the mature and declining stages. Specifically, we measure annual cash effective tax rates(ETR) and GAAP effective tax rates(ETR) for the three－year period that includes the current year’s cash ETR(GAAP ETR) and the four prior years’(i.e., over the period t－2 to t) cash ETRs (GAAP ETRs). Following Dyreng et al.(2008), we calculate the Cash(GAAP) ETR as the ratio of the sum of the cash tax payments (tax expense) over a five－year period to the sum of income before taxes and special items over the same five－year period. To verify these hypotheses, the sample consists non－banking firms with a December fiscal year－end listed on the Korean Stock Exchange over 2015－2017. [Findings] Our results are given as follows. First, we find that the changes of cash holding increase in the introduction stage in the firms’ life cycle. This finding provides a better understanding of the conditions under which the effect factor affect firms’ life cycle that focus on minimization(i.e., the level of tax avoidance) seek to reduce firms’ tax burdens. Second, contrary to expectations, we can not show that the growth stage in firms’ life cycle increase in the tax avoidance. In order to better capture the joint effect of actual cashflow and the firms’ life cycle on the tax avoidance., we find that the tax avoidance in the introduction stage is significantly greater for firms with other stages in the firms’ life cycle. [Implications] In summary, we consistently find a positive and significant relation between tax avoidance and firm’s life cycle. Namely, this positive relation persists across different proxie for firms’ tax avoidances(i.e. Cash ETR, and GAAP ETR) as well as across different proxies for firms’ life cycle(i.e.,the introduction stage, the growth stage, actual cashflow).