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審計人員之產業專精與客戶租稅規避：中國實證研究
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especially when there is higher fee dependence or longer auditor tenure. This result indicates
that in the case of poor auditor independence, auditor industry expertise may encourage
clients’ tax avoidance instead of constraining it.
Our study contributes to the existing literature in three ways. First, our evidence
facilitates a better understanding of auditor industry expertise. Prior research mainly focused
on the influence of industry expertise on audit quality or audit pricing. Our study extends
these studies by providing evidence on the association between auditor industry expertise
and tax avoidance. Although auditor industry expertise may enhance both the tax consulting
role and auditing role in theory, our evidence suggests that the tax consulting role of industry
expert may dominate.
Secondly, this paper further investigate the influence of auditor independence, and
suggest that poor auditor independence (proxied by fee dependence and auditor tenure) may
enhance the association between auditor industry expertise and tax avoidance. This finding
not only extends prior audit research, but also has implications for policymakers. They
should be aware that although encouraging audit firms to develop industry expertise is good
for improving audit quality and audit pricing, poor auditor independence may induce
industry expert to help client engage in tax avoidance activity. Therefore, the risk of both
audit firms and their clients is increased.
Thirdly, our evidence adds to the growing literature on the determinants of corporate tax
avoidance. Prior research mainly focused on corporate characteristics such as tax ratio,
boards of directors, and executive incentives (e.g., Dyreng, Hanlon, and Maydew, 2010;
Robinson, Sikes, and Weaver, 2010; Rego and Wilson, 2012). Our study extends existing
research by considering an additional party to tax avoidance–the audit firm. Through the
discussion of audit firm’s dual role in tax avoidance, this study established an association
between auditor industry expertise and tax avoidance and demonstrated that industry expert
is associated with greater tax avoidance.
The remainder of the paper is as follows. Section 2 discusses prior related research and
hypothesis development. Section 3 describes our measure of tax avoidance and auditor
industry expertise in detail and the regression models. Section 4 provides a description of our
sample, tests, and results. Section 5 concludes this paper.