Fiscal Aggressiveness: A comparison between companies listed on the NYSE and BM&FBOVESPA1

Abstract

Actions aimed at reducing corporate taxes through aggressive tax activities are becoming an increasingly common feature of the organizational environment in many countries around the world. In view of this, the objective of this work was to verify that the companies listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE) are less aggressive fiscally than companies listed on the São Paulo Stock Exchange(BM&FBOVESPA). The analysis period was from 2010 to 2014. To achieve this goal, the aggressive fiscal proxies were based on the study of Chen et al. (2010): effective rate of tax (ETR) and difference between accounting profit and taxable profit (BTD). Regression techniques were used OLS Regression and Quantile regression for a sample of 501 companies, being 107 companies listed on the BM&FBOVESPA and 394 listed on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE). The results showed that the NYSE companies are less aggressive fiscally than companies listed on the BM&FBOVESPA,  except in the upper quantile (quantile 90) relating to the ETR, in which companies the NYSE showed lower ETR than companies of BM&FBOVESPA, suggesting greater fiscal aggression of these companies.