Banking Market Consolidation and Tax Planning Intermediation: Evidence from Client Firm Tax Haven Operations

Jeong-Bon KIM*, Yupeng LIN, Ying MAO, Zheng WANG

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Journal PublicationsJournal Article (refereed)peer-review

2 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

This study examines the effect of banking market consolidations via mergers and acquisitions (M&As) on the role of banks in intermediating corporate tax planning through offshore tax haven operations. We find that bank clients significantly increase their tax haven operations after their banks are merged with others. In addition, such an increase is greater when a commercial bank merges with an investment bank and when the clients have greater tax planning opportunities. We also employ network analyses to show that the propensity for a client to expand its operations into a new tax haven country increases significantly when its relationship bank enters into this country through an M&A. Collectively, our findings reveal that bank M&As enhance banks’ tax intermediation capability.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)217-245
Number of pages29
JournalThe Accounting Review
Volume98
Issue number4
Early online date25 Oct 2022
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jul 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We appreciate helpful comments from Lillian F. Mills (editor), two anonymous reviewers, Sati Bandyopadhyay, Wenxia Ge, Tiemei Li, Sharon Katz, Duane Kennedy, Byron Song, Haibin Wu, Yangxin Yu, Liandong Zhang, and participants of research workshops at the City University of Hong Kong, Fudan University, Lingnan University, National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School, Sun Yat-sen University, the University of Waterloo, and the 2019 42nd Annual Conference of the Canadian Academic Accounting Association (CAAA). Special thanks go to Anand Srinivasan, who shared the bank M&A data with us. Yupeng Lin acknowledges research support from the National University of Singapore and Ministry of Education (MOE) Tier 1 Grant (Grant R-521-000-044-115).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2023 American Accounting Association. All rights reserved.

Keywords

  • Tax haven
  • tax avoidance
  • banking market consolidation
  • tax planning intermediation
  • tax haven

Cite this