An Investigation on the Effect of Tax Avoidance on the Transparency of Financial Reporting Firms Listed in Tehran Stock Exchange

Abstract

Abstract In this paper, the impact of tax avoidance on the transparency of financial reporting of firms listed in Tehran Stock Exchange is investigated. The indexes that are used to measure tax avoidance and financial reporting transparency are respectively effective tax rate and accruals quality. The sample of study consists of 75 firms listed in Tehran Stock Exchange during the period of 2001 to 2010. In order to test the research hypothesis, ordinary least squares (OLS) regression is used. The results show that tax planning activity reduce financial reporting transparency. In other words, we can say that tax planning activity is required for masking complex transactions and this negatively affect the information environment of the companies and reduce financial reporting transparency.

Keywords

• tax avoidance
• effective tax rate
• financial reporting transparency
• accruals quality