Managerial Ability and Accounting-Tax Compliance

Abstract

Managerial ability comes from capabilities, skills and experiences that reflect on strategic differentials for all organizational levels, being a premise of greater efficiency and accounting and tax knowledge that can bring great benefits to the results of organizations. In this context, this study seeks to verify the influence of managerial skill on the accounting and tax compliance of publicly traded companies at a global level. This research is characterized as descriptive, with a quantitative approach, carried out through documents collection and the data were treated by multiple linear regression. The research population comprises public companies from 28 countries, with a sample of 11,506 companies from 2012 to 2019. In general, the results showed that managerial skill positively influences the level of accounting-tax compliance of companies. When comparing the results between the groups of countries analyzed, it is evident that the country's legal orientation becomes a complementary factor to managerial skill in determining accounting-tax compliance. For example, companies with more skilled managers located in common law countries have greater accounting-tax noncompliance, on the other hand, companies with greater managerial skills from civil law and Muslim countries have greater accounting and tax compliance. The study reinforces the premise that companies from common law countries and with greater managerial skills are concerned with providing higher quality accounting information to external users, placing less emphasis on the use of corporate accounting for tax purposes.