Tax Transparency: Does it pay to be transparent? On the Dynamics of Voluntary Tax Disclosure

Tax Transparency: Does it pay to be transparent? On the Dynamics of Voluntary Tax Disclosure

In the last decade the global landscape of tax transparency has gone through a revolution. Multinationals are facing an increasingly challenging tax environment which ranges from progressively more stringent tax disclosure requirements to exponentially raising public pressure on corporations to display fair tax contributions. However increased transparency in tax reporting implies significant administrative costs without the certainty that revealing complex tax information enhance greater stakeholders understanding of whether a company paid an adequate share of taxes or rather engaged in tax avoidance. Regardless of the formal corporate opposition, a trend in voluntary tax disclosure has been documented in the latest years: firms are actually answering the call for higher tax transparency. So far no empirical evidence has been provided on the determinants and only limited analysis has been conducted on the consequences of increased voluntary tax transparency. However, such a study is necessary to assess whether mandatory disclosure of tax information through law requirements is needed or rather market forces alone are sufficient to push corporate tax transparency towards an acceptable level from stakeholders´ perspective. In order to answer the above described research questions two distinctive regression analysis are implemented: first a DID regression model is used to assess the drivers for voluntary tax disclosure, secondly an OLS regression analysis is executed to evaluate the consequence of increased tax transparency. For the purpose of the whole analysis, a sample of UK MNEs is considered for the period 2010-2016.

Project members

Katharina Nicolay

Katharina Nicolay

Project Coordinator
Deputy

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Johannes Voget

Johannes Voget

Research Associate

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Client/Allowance
University of Mannheim, Mannheim, DE // Baden-Württemberg, Stuttgart, DE // Leibniz Association, Berlin, DE // ZEW GmbH, Mannheim, DE