Distribution of the Tax Burden across Companies in Vietnam: The Issue of Corporate Tax Avoidance

Abstract

Purpose: This paper considers the issue of corporate tax avoidance (CTA) in the distribution of the tax burden across companies in Vietnam because the high level of CTA leads to unfairness in taxation. In particular, we aim for discussing the way to measure the extent of CTA and explore the determinants of CTA that reflect the features of high-tax risk-taking companies. Research design, data and methodology: The study investigates factors influencing the CTA behavior of legal entities listed on the Vietnam stock market between 2012 and 2018 to fill the empirical research vacuum in the country. we employ the dynamic GMM estimate method. Interestingly, CTA is considered through three approaches, including two effective-tax-rate-based methods and especially accrual earnings Results: The results highlight tax - accounting book disparities have significant effects on CTA. In addition, firm size, net asset value, debt leverage, and tax-accounting books are related to CTA. Conclusions: Tax avoidance is shown to have a positive correlation with financial distress in this case. The higher a company's capital adequacy ratio, the fewer tax avoidance opportunities it has. The paper draws some recommendations to deal with tax avoidance that improves the fairness in the distribution of the tax burden among corporations.