This study examines whether auditor opinions are affected by political and economic influences from governments. We use auditor locality (local versus non-local) to capture such influences from local governments in China. Based on data from China's stock markets for the period 1996-2002, we find that local auditors, who have greater economic dependence on local clients and are subject to more political influence from local governments than non-local auditors, are inclined to report favorably on local governmentowned companies to mitigate probable economic losses. Moreover, companies with qualified opinions are more likely to switch from a non-local auditor to a local auditor than companies with unqualified opinions. Contrary to some prior studies, we find that in China's political environment, local government-owned companies that switched from a non-local auditor to a local auditor after receiving a qualified opinion can succeed in opinion shopping.

We investigate whether a departure from a tax-based accounting system toward the adoption of International Financial Reporting Standards encourages tax noncompliance. We also examine whether such a departure, which weakens book-tax conformity, affects the informativeness of book-tax differences for tax noncompliance. Our evidence suggests that as book-tax conformity decreases, tax noncompliance increases. Although book-tax differences remain informative of tax noncompliance, the informativeness attenuates as book-tax conformity weakens. Additionally, firms with high incentives to inflate book income are more tax compliant than their counterparts after the departure from a tax-based accounting system

This study investigates how government ownership and corporate governance influence a firm's tax aggressiveness. Using Chinese listed companies during 2003-2009, we find that compared with government-controlled firms, nongovernment-controlled firms pursue a more aggressive tax strategy. In particular, non-government-controlled firms with a higher percentage of the board shareholdings and with a CEO who also serves as the board chairman are more aggressive. For government-controlled firms, we find that board shareholding has an impact on tax aggressiveness and it does not differ between local and central government-controlled firms. However, local government-controlled firms in less developed regions where the implementation of corporate governance measures is generally less effective are more tax aggressive than those in other regions.

No abstract

No abstract