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The paper aims to understand the impact of corporate ownership structure on tax avoidance in Asian contexts. The ownership structure in Asia is concentrated in one group of shareholders, which enables this shareholder to have a significant influence on tax avoidance. This research mainly reviews published research articles. Search terms, such as ownership, tax avoidance, and tax aggressiveness were used in the search function in all fields of the papers from Scopus and Web of Science databases. This study captured nine pieces of empirical research after applying several filtrations (inclusion and exclusion) in the article search. Most of selected researches were conducted in China, while some in Southeast Asia. There are four review questions in this research, namely: (1) How do shareholders influence tax avoidance levels in Asia; (2) What is the best way to measure the level of ownership and tax avoidance; (3) What type of corporate owners do scholars study the most and the least; (4) What are the methodological gaps in the research topic (corporate ownership and tax avoidance) that future scholars should be aware of. The paper finds that different shareholders behave differently towards tax, and the behaviour is according to the host country’s attributes, such as country settings, national tax policy, and investor protection levels. The study primarily helps governments and regulators understand the motives and techniques shareholders apply to avoid tax. Furthermore, it also provides repeatable methodological guidance in detail for future researchers to conduct a systematic literature review and for research students to formulate their hypothesis on the relationship between ownership structure and tax avoidance.

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of audit fees, auditors' quality and board ownership on tax aggressiveness in Thailand.Design/methodology/approachThe sample of this study is based on 215 firm-year observations of SET-100 listed companies in Thailand during the 2010–2018 periods. This study employs a panel least square regression with period fixed effects. The study retrieved the corporate governance variables from the downloaded annual reports, whilst the remaining data were collected from the EMIS database.FindingsThis study provides evidence that audit fees reduce tax aggressiveness and board ownership enhance tax aggressiveness among the firms. Nonaudit services provided by auditors impair auditors' independence and lead to higher tax aggressiveness. The result supports the agency theory, which explains that managers and blockholders may enjoy private benefits of control at the expense of other shareholders in the absence of market control. Thus, firms need good governance practices such as incentives paid for the effort of auditors and nonaudit services monitoring to curb such exploitation.Research limitations/implicationsThe results provide implications to the firms and regulators that incentives to the monitoring parties such as auditors can reduce tax aggressiveness among the firms. Nevertheless, higher ownership given to boards as incentives may lead to concentrated ownership and thus lead to the type 2 agency problem, which is between majority and minority shareholders. The result also provides caution to the regulators to monitor the nonaudit services provided by the auditors as it might impair their independence and compromise the tax paid to IRB.Originality/valueThis study is pioneer research discussing tax avoidance in Thailand. The Thai Government has been noticing that tax avoidance is being performed in the country, but academic discussion on this topic had never been elaborated.

Ironically, with an overwhelming usage of plastic shopping bags, and product packaging among Thailand’s small medium enterprises like the nation’s tourism street markets, literature, and informed practices on Thailand’s domestic plastic policy communications towards a policy understanding, are still insufficient. The current condition has eventually made this study possible. The research significance has reflected the diffusion of transnational communication framework towards domestic policy transfer and underscored a better attempt of policy understanding process especially towards tourism’s SME. The research employed a quantitative methodology with a total of 380 paper questionnaires distributed to SME sellers at Chatuchak Weekend Market in Bangkok. While the research endeavored to exercise the policy communications evidence of two major plastic policies in Thailand (National 3R Strategy Campaign & Plastic Debris Management Plan 2017-2021), of 380 respondents, 300 (79% response rate) were validated and proceeded to the next sequence of the survey as they had knowledge about mentioned two policies. With three types of communications venues proposed (non-formal, semi-formal & formal) and targeting three different policy understandings (objective, subjective & overall policy understanding), the finding has shown that all proposed communication venues, although robustly designed by an applicable theoretical foundation, did not contribute to the plastic’s overall policy understanding. Nevertheless, formal communication venues contributed positively toward an objective understanding of the policy, and non-formal venues toward subjective understanding. Most significantly, the distinctive finding of this research is a strong argument that Thailand’s government has not fully deemed the effective strategy and framework for its domestic plastic policy transfer - notably to tourism’s SMEs.