IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/pal/ijodag/v20y2023i2d10.1057_s41310-022-00150-8.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

SEC review of tax disclosures in family firms

Author

Listed:
  • Samer Khalil

    (Murray State University)

  • Denise O’Shaughnessy

    (Murray State University)

  • Ian Twardus

    (Murray State University)

Abstract

In this paper, we investigate the SEC review of tax disclosures in the 10-k filings of family firms in the USA over the period 2004− 2018. Relying on agency theory, we show that family firms are less likely to receive an SEC comment letter that identifies deficiencies or omissions in tax disclosures than non-family firms. We further document that family firms resolve SEC comment letters including tax disclosures in a significantly shorter period of time relative to non-family firms. Additional analysis demonstrates that the number of issues raised in SEC comment letters including tax issues in family firms is significantly less than that in non-family firms. These findings expand the family firm literature by documenting more transparent and compliant tax disclosures in family firms. They also contribute to the literature related to the SEC comment letters by investigating SEC review of tax disclosures. This is important since tax disclosures are mandatory in nature, represent the sole source of public information related to taxes, are used by the IRS to detect tax avoidance, and are becoming increasingly relevant for various stakeholders.

Suggested Citation

  • Samer Khalil & Denise O’Shaughnessy & Ian Twardus, 2023. "SEC review of tax disclosures in family firms," International Journal of Disclosure and Governance, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 20(2), pages 138-154, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:pal:ijodag:v:20:y:2023:i:2:d:10.1057_s41310-022-00150-8
    DOI: 10.1057/s41310-022-00150-8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/10.1057/s41310-022-00150-8
    File Function: Abstract
    Download Restriction: Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1057/s41310-022-00150-8?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Chen, Shuping & Chen, Xia & Cheng, Qiang & Shevlin, Terry, 2010. "Are family firms more tax aggressive than non-family firms?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(1), pages 41-61, January.
    2. Villalonga, Belen & Amit, Raphael, 2006. "How do family ownership, control and management affect firm value?," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 80(2), pages 385-417, May.
    3. Anderson, Ronald C. & Duru, Augustine & Reeb, David M., 2009. "Founders, heirs, and corporate opacity in the United States," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 92(2), pages 205-222, May.
    4. Carmelo Cennamo & Pascual Berrone & Cristina Cruz & Luis R. Gomez–Mejia, 2012. "Socioemotional Wealth and Proactive Stakeholder Engagement: Why Family–Controlled Firms Care More about their Stakeholders," Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, , vol. 36(6), pages 1153-1173, November.
    5. Leuz, Christian & Nanda, Dhananjay & Wysocki, Peter D., 2003. "Earnings management and investor protection: an international comparison," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 69(3), pages 505-527, September.
    6. Shuping Chen & Xia Chen & Qiang Cheng, 2008. "Do Family Firms Provide More or Less Voluntary Disclosure?," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 46(3), pages 499-536, June.
    7. Francis, Jennifer & Schipper, Katherine & Vincent, Linda, 2005. "Earnings and dividend informativeness when cash flow rights are separated from voting rights," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 329-360, June.
    8. Verrecchia, Robert E., 2001. "Essays on disclosure," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(1-3), pages 97-180, December.
    9. Desai, Mihir A. & Dharmapala, Dhammika, 2006. "Corporate tax avoidance and high-powered incentives," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 79(1), pages 145-179, January.
    10. Shuping Chen & Xia Chen & Qiang Cheng, 2014. "Conservatism and Equity Ownership of the Founding Family," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(3), pages 403-430, September.
    11. Mark H. Lang & Karl V. Lins & Darius P. Miller, 2004. "Concentrated Control, Analyst Following, and Valuation: Do Analysts Matter Most When Investors Are Protected Least?," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(3), pages 589-623, June.
    12. Lillian F. Mills & Richard C. Sansing, 2000. "Strategic Tax and Financial Reporting Decisions: Theory and Evidence," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 17(1), pages 85-106, March.
    13. Engel, Pascal J. & Hack, Andreas & Stanley, Laura J. & Kellermanns, Franz W., 2019. "Voluntary disclosure of individual supervisory board compensation in public family firms," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 362-374.
    14. repec:bla:jfinan:v:58:y:2003:i:3:p:1301-1327 is not listed on IDEAS
    15. Dechun Wang, 2006. "Founding Family Ownership and Earnings Quality," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(3), pages 619-656, June.
    16. Ali, Ashiq & Chen, Tai-Yuan & Radhakrishnan, Suresh, 2007. "Corporate disclosures by family firms," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 44(1-2), pages 238-286, September.
    17. Rick Johnston & Reining Petacchi, 2017. "Regulatory Oversight of Financial Reporting: Securities and Exchange Commission Comment Letters," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 34(2), pages 1128-1155, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Lee, Cheng-Hsun & Bose, Sudipta, 2021. "Do family firms engage in less tax avoidance than non-family firms? The corporate opacity perspective," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 17(2).
    2. Srinidhi, Bin & Liao, Qunfeng, 2020. "Family firms and crash risk: Alignment and entrenchment effects," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2).
    3. Claudia Arena & Giovanna Michelon, 2018. "A matter of control or identity? Family firms' environmental reporting decisions along the corporate life cycle," Business Strategy and the Environment, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 27(8), pages 1596-1608, December.
    4. Liangbo Ma & Shiguang Ma & Gary Tian, 2017. "Corporate Opacity and Cost of Debt for Family Firms," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 26(1), pages 27-59, January.
    5. Hsin-Yi Chi & Tzu-Ching Weng & Guang-Zheng Chen & Shu-Ping Chen, 2019. "Do Political Connections Affect the Conservative Financial Reporting of Family Firms?," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 11(20), pages 1-20, October.
    6. Shujun Ding & Baozhi Qu & Zhenyu Wu, 2016. "Family Control, Socioemotional Wealth, and Governance Environment: The Case of Bribes," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 136(3), pages 639-654, July.
    7. Eugster, Nicolas, 2019. "Family firms and financial analyst activity," Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 57(C).
    8. Shuping Chen & Xia Chen & Qiang Cheng, 2014. "Conservatism and Equity Ownership of the Founding Family," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(3), pages 403-430, September.
    9. Ghosh, Aloke(Al) & Tang, Charles Y., 2015. "Assessing financial reporting quality of family firms: The auditors׳ perspective," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 60(1), pages 95-116.
    10. Ma, Liangbo & Ma, Shiguang & Tian, Gary, 2016. "Family control, accounting misstatements, and market reactions to restatements: Evidence from China," Emerging Markets Review, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 1-27.
    11. Attig, Najah & Chen, Ruiyuan & El Ghoul, Sadok & Guedhami, Omrane & Kwok, Chuck & Pittman, Jeffrey, 2020. "Are insiders equal? Evidence from earnings management in closely held East Asian firms," Research in International Business and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 54(C).
    12. Dan Weiss, 2014. "Internal Controls in Family-Owned Firms," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(3), pages 463-482, September.
    13. Xia Chen & Qiang Cheng & Zhonglan Dai, 2013. "Family Ownership and CEO Turnovers," Contemporary Accounting Research, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 30(3), pages 1166-1190, September.
    14. Muhammad Jahangir Ali & Seema Miglani & Man Dang & Premkanth Puwanenthiren & Mazur Mieszko, 2022. "Do family firms pay less for external funding?," Australian Journal of Management, Australian School of Business, vol. 47(2), pages 225-250, May.
    15. Luis Gomez-Mejia & Cristina Cruz & Claudia Imperatore, 2014. "Financial Reporting and the Protection of Socioemotional Wealth in Family-Controlled Firms," European Accounting Review, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(3), pages 387-402, September.
    16. Xia Chen & Mei Feng & Chan Li, 2020. "Family entrenchment and internal control: evidence from S&P 1500 firms," Review of Accounting Studies, Springer, vol. 25(1), pages 246-278, March.
    17. Jiang, Fuxiu & Cai, Xinni & Nofsinger, John R. & Zheng, Xiaojia, 2020. "Can reputation concern restrain bad news hoarding in family firms?," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 114(C).
    18. Eugster, Nicolas & Wang, Qingxia, 2023. "Large blockholders and stock price crash risk: An international study," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 55(C).
    19. Sridhar Arcot & Valentina Bruno, 2012. "Do Standard Corporate Governance Practices Matter in Family Firms?," FMG Discussion Papers dp710, Financial Markets Group.
    20. Beyer, Anne & Cohen, Daniel A. & Lys, Thomas Z. & Walther, Beverly R., 2010. "The financial reporting environment: Review of the recent literature," Journal of Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 50(2-3), pages 296-343, December.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:pal:ijodag:v:20:y:2023:i:2:d:10.1057_s41310-022-00150-8. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Sonal Shukla or Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.palgrave.com .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.