Title: The impact of corporate long-term tax avoidance and tax uncertainty on cost of equity capital: evidence from Korea

Authors: Minjo Kang

Addresses: Department of Taxation and Accounting, Dongduk Women's University, Seoul, South Korea

Abstract: This study aims to investigate the impact of Korean firms' long-run tax avoidance on the cost of equity capital. To the end, we examine whether long-term tax avoidance and tax uncertainty are associated with the cost of equity capital. According to the implicit tax theory, tax-favoured investments can decrease the firm's expected operating income. Besides, implicit taxes generated by tax credit can have distributional effects: the tax benefits shift to other stakeholders than the shareholders of the firms opting for the legitimate tax avoidance. We find results that, controlling for firm's various risk factors, Korean firms' long-run tax avoidance is positively associated with higher cost of equity capital. The results suggest that the unfavourable implicit tax effects of long-run tax avoidance dominate the favourable tax saving effects for the part of shareholders.

Keywords: cost of equity capital; long-run tax avoidance; implicit tax; tax uncertainty; Korea.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEBR.2023.127287

International Journal of Economics and Business Research, 2023 Vol.25 No.1, pp.101 - 112

Received: 22 Mar 2020
Accepted: 01 Apr 2021
Published online: 30 Nov 2022 *

Full-text access for editors Full-text access for subscribers Purchase this article Comment on this article