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The Danger Of Being Neighbors : Community Information And Corporate Tax Avoidance, Xiaowei Wang

Lingnan Theses and Dissertations (MPhil & PhD)

This paper examines the relationship between tax officers’ access to community information and the effectiveness of tax authorities in constraining tax avoidance in China. Numerous studies document that people can obtain valuable information in the community in which their daily activities take place (community information). Focusing on a valuable setting in China in which corporate taxes are collected by tax offices that are located very close to firms (with an average distance of 6.5 km), this study examines whether tax officers’ access to community information at a firm’s location can reduce the firm’s tax avoidance. I broadly define tax avoidance …