No. 94: Public tax disclosures and investor perceptions

Jahr: 2022
Typ: Working Paper

Abstract

To reveal whether firms pay their fair share of taxes, regulators are increasingly mandating public tax disclosures. Such disclosures are often assumed to raise public attention and help non-professional stakeholders, such as retail investors, identify aggressive tax avoiders. We conduct two experiments to test this assumption. Our first experiment indicates that retail investors become worse at identifying aggressive tax avoiders when disclosures focus on bottom-line tax numbers because such disclosures invite them to use these exclusively as heuristics. The results of the second experiment demonstrate that policies to counteract the adverse effects of public tax disclosures, such as requiring the provision of a disclaimer, are helpful but that none are fully effective.

Beteiligte Institutionen

Die Hauptstandorte vom TRR 266 sind die Universität Paderborn (Sprecherhochschule), die HU Berlin und die Universität Mannheim. Alle drei Standorte sind seit vielen Jahren Zentren für Rechnungswesen- und Steuerforschung. Hinzu kommen Wissenschaftler der LMU München, der Frankfurt School of Finance and Management, der Goethe-Universität Frankfurt, der Universität zu Köln und der Leibniz Universität Hannover, die die gleiche Forschungsagenda verfolgen.

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