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 language | English |
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Pages (from-to) | 217-245 |
Number of pages | 29 |
Journal | The Accounting Review |
Volume | 98 |
Issue number | 4 |
Early online date | 25 Oct 2022 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 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