Tax havens and disclosure aggregation

Multinational firms have been accused by politicians, regulators, and citizen groups of shifting profits to low-tax geographic areas. We present evidence that multinational firms with tax-haven operations tend to aggregate their geographic disclosures to a greater extent. The results are consistent...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of international business studies Vol. 49; no. 1; pp. 49 - 69
Main Authors Akamah, Herita, Hope, Ole-Kristian, Thomas, Wayne B
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published London Springer Science + Business Media 01.01.2018
Palgrave Macmillan UK
Palgrave Macmillan
Subjects
Business and Management
Business Strategy/Leadership
Companies
Criticism
Disclosure
Financial reporting
International Business
Management
Multinational corporations
Organization
Policy making
Politicians
Profits
Retailing
Tax avoidance
Tax havens
Taxation
Transparency
Exhibit 21
aggregation
geographic reporting
tax havens
disclosure transparency
tax avoidance
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Summary:Multinational firms have been accused by politicians, regulators, and citizen groups of shifting profits to low-tax geographic areas. We present evidence that multinational firms with tax-haven operations tend to aggregate their geographic disclosures to a greater extent. The results are consistent with managers attempting to avoid criticism by reducing the transparency of their tax-avoidance activities. We find these results to be stronger for larger firms with higher political costs and for firms in natural-resources industries, in retail industries, or with low competition. The evidence is relevant to policymakers and others interested in multinational firms’ financial reporting and tax activities.
ISSN:0047-2506
1478-6990
DOI:10.1057/s41267-017-0084-x