Financial Statement Comparability, Product Market Competition and Tax Avoidance

Companies are always looking for ways to pay lower tax, through tax avoidance. By highlighting the similarities and differences of companies, financial statement comparability increases the users' will be able to identify unusual transactions of companies and reduces managers' willingness to tax avoidance. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of financial statement comparability on tax avoidance and also to examine the moderating role of market competition in this regard. For this purpose, using multiple regression analysis on panel data, the data of 110 companies listed on Tehran Stock Exchange are analyzed during the period 2013- 2018. The results show that the financial statement comparability as a governance mechanism prevents managers' opportunistic behaviors including tax avoidance. The findings also indicate that the negative relationship between comparability and tax avoidance is less severe in firms in highly competitive industries. This result supports the view that competitive pressure can increase managers' incentives for tax avoidance by providing more cash to invest and cope with the competition.