租稅稽查與廠商租稅逃漏──來自擴大書審廠商的證據

Tax Audit and Tax Evasion: Evidence from Taiwanese Firms

本文推估擴大書審制度造成的租稅逃漏金額，財政部為簡化稽徵成本及程序，鼓勵全年營業收入淨額及非營業收入合計在3,000萬元以下之營利事業以擴大書審方式申報營所稅，透過此一方式繳稅的廠商，稽徵機關就其申報案件通常予以「書面」審核，稽查的強度較低，因此，廠商有較多機會進行租稅逃漏。本文利用傾向分數配對法將擴大書審與特性相似的非擴大書審廠商配對後，選取收入合計1,000-3,000萬元的企業進行分析。研究結果發現，擴大書審廠商無論有無給付員工薪資，員工人數及給付員工薪資金額都顯著低於非擴大書審廠商。根據我們的估計結果，在2004到2014年之間，擴大書審制度每年因操控收入及成本費用所造成的營所稅及綜所稅逃漏金額約為20至30億元。

This paper examines the causal effect of corporate tax audits on firms' behaviors using a unique corporate tax audit policy in Taiwan, which involves lower audit effort for firms with reported revenues just below 30 million NTD. The study focuses on how firms “control” the cost and expense to minimize their tax burden. To simplify the analysis, we investigate whether there is a significant difference in salary expenditure between the firms which file their tax returns under a unique corporate tax audit policy and those do not. We use the corporate tax return data and income registry data from the Fiscal Information Agency between 2004 and 2014. To reduce the selection bias, the “propensity score matching” method is adopted. We find this policy significantly decreases reported salary expenditure, and leads to annual tax losses of about 2 billion to 3 billion.