재무제약과 현금조세회피

초록

This study empirically examines the effect of financial constraints on corporate tax avoidance and investigates how this relationship varies depending on the level of cash holdings. The contributions of this study are as follows. First, by adopting a change－based analytical design, this study minimizes omitted variable bias arising from time－invariant firm characteristics and identifies the pure causal effect of changes in financial constraints on tax strategy utilization. Second, by employing multiple proxies for financial constraints—including the average interest rate on borrowings, loan interest rate, interest coverage ratio, KZ index, Z－score, and SA index—and re estimating the coefficients of the SA index to reflect the characteristics of Korean firms, this study enhances the reliability of the empirical findings. Third, the analysis separately investigates the relationship between financial constraints and the cash effective tax rate for firms with negative pre－tax income. Fourth, in examining the association between financial constraints and cash tax avoidance, this study considers not only the level of cash holdings commonly used in prior literature but also whether firms raise external funding through seasoned equity offerings. The empirical results are summarized as follows. First, higher financial constraints lead firms to engage more actively in cash tax avoidance and tax deferral strategies. Second, the positive impact of increased financial constraints on changes in cash tax avoidance weakens when firms hold higher levels of cash. Third, external capital raised through seasoned equity offerings improves a firm’s cash flow position, thereby reducing the need to secure funds through tax avoidance strategies. Fourth, when using the re－estimated K－SA index tailored to Korean firms, a significant positive relationship is again confirmed between changes in financial constraints and changes in cash tax avoidance. Fifth, even firms with negative pre－tax income increase cash tax avoidance as financial constraints intensify. Sixth, meaningful results are obtained when analyzing changes rather than levels, indicating that change－based measures more effectively eliminate time－invariant firm characteristics and better capture the intertemporal variation in tax strategy behavior.

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