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Research Article

A Study on the Effect of Long-Term Tax Minimization Strategies on the Value Relevance of Accounting Earnings

Lee, Yeonghan, Choi, Yujin

University of Seoul
University of Seoul

Published: January 2017 · Vol. 46, No. 1 · pp. 75-107

DOI: https://doi.org/10.17287/kmr.2017.46.1.75

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Abstract

How does company's tax minimization strategy affect on firm value? If the company reduces actively tax expenditures through tax minimization strategies, it will improve cash flow and surplus cash flow will have a positive effect on corporate valuation. The surplus cash flow due to tax minimization strategies, on the other hand, may not be connected to the corporate value due to the opacity of accounting information. Because of these contradictory effects, the level of tax burden may affect differently when Valuation. The purpose of this study is to investigate the value relevance between accounting earnings and information for the tax burden in these conflicting possibilities. For this study, we used Ohlson(1995)’s model to test these hypothesis, which is the most commonly used in the valuation. Although previous studies have described the value of the company using Tobin's Q, we are focused to test the direct link between price and accounting earnings. Ohlson’s model is the most intuitive model to validate the accounting profit. Tax burden levels were measured using a long-term effective rate by Desai et al(2008). This is because long-term effective tax rate can be inferred that the public continues to persist even after the future. In addition, the tax burden level is divided according to the level of earnings management, as measured by the absolute value of discretionary accruals. We used Kothari et al(2005)’s method. Test results were as follows. For the firms of lower long-term effective tax rate, value relevance of accounting earnings came out significantly higher. This show that the tax burden level affects in corporate valuation process through accounting earnings. And for the firms of higher earnings management, despite lower long-term effective tax rate, value relevance of accounting earnings appeared significantly lower. These results can be interpreted that investors discriminate firms in evaluation by clarifying whether tax buden is relevant to earnings management or not. We can infer that market participants reflect differently about opacity information. For the robustness of study, we tested the tax burden measured by the estimated effective tax rate. But we didn’t get a significant result as long-term effective tax rate. Our study contributes to two streams of research. Fist, we offered empirical evidence between accounting earnings and firm value depending on tax burden. Second, we also gave new evidence between accounting earnings and firm value through opacity information. As finding link about accounting earnings and firm value through taxes information, we now have a chance to think about usefulness of taxes information. Despite these contributions, we didn’t describe specific causality about low tax burden. For example, whether highly likely to manage a structure designed to relieve tax burdens including leverage structure, retention of depreciable assets, tax credits, tax reductions, and cost structure of disclamation, or not. Research on these causal relationships will be covered in a follow-up study.
Keywords: 장기현금유효세율가치관련성조세최소화전략