The Effect of Tax Avoidance on Audit Costs

Abstract

This research aims to analyze the impact of tax avoidance on audit fees in Indonesian Stock Exchange (IDX) companies in 2013-2015. This research used book-tax differences and book-tax conformity as a proxy for tax avoidance. The result of book-tax differences as a proxy of tax avoidance showed a significant effect on audit fees, indicating that the bigger the negative book-tax differences, the more the audit fees. On the other hand, the result of book-tax conformity as a proxy of tax avoidance showed that there is no significant effect on audit fees. Thus, book-tax differences is preferable to book-tax conformity as a proxy for tax avoidance. This research does a difference test of the impact of large book-tax differences and small book-tax differences on the audit fees as an additional analysis. The result showed that large book-tax differences is more significant than the other. This research also does a difference test of the impact of large positive book-tax differences and large negative book-tax differences on audit fees. It indicates no significant difference between the effect of large positive book-tax differences and large negative book-tax differences on audit fees.