The impact of corporate governance mechanisms on the tax gap of listed companies in Tehran Stock Exchange

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between corporate governance mechanisms and tax gap. Independence of the Board, duality role of the CEO, institutional shareholders, state ownership, existence of the internal audit, audit opinion, changing of the auditor and the transaction with related parties are considered as corporate governance mechanisms proxies. In addition, firm size and the financial leverage are entered to the model as control variables. The final sample of analysis includes 110 firms for a period of 6 years from 2007 to 2012 and the multiple regression method based on panel data was used to test the proposed research hypotheses. The results indicate that despite the existence of negative relationship of board independence, state ownership, audit opinion, auditor change and leverage have negative impact with the tax gap; internal audit and size have positive impact on the tax gap. In addition, there is no significant relationship among the duality role of CEO, institutional shareholders and transactions of related parties with the tax gap.

Keywords

• Corporate Governance
• independence of the board
• Institutional investors
• tax gap
• transactions with related parties