＜Abstract＞

In recent studies, there have been studies that have demonstrated that tax avoidance and tax risk provide information of different characteristics by studying the relevance between tax risk and tax avoidance and financial reporting quality, while there has been no study of the relationship between conservatism and tax avoidance and tax risk. The purpose of this study is to verify whether the information characteristics of tax avoidance and tax risk are the same or different by empirically identifying how tax risk relates to conservatism based on the results of the previous studies showing that tax avoidance and conservatism are related.

The results of this study are summarized as follows. First, the analysis in Basu (1997) shows that tax avoidance has a positive connection to conservatism, but not to tax risk and conservatism, indicating that tax avoidance and tax risk have different characteristics from conservatism. Second, the analysis in the Ball and Shivakumar (2006) found that tax avoidance and tax risk as a result of variability in ETR has a positive connection to conservatism, but not by variability in CashETR. In other words, the tax risk resulting from the variability of the CashETR shows that there are different characteristics from tax avoidance.

The above findings are meaningful in that they further confirmed whether tax risk and tax avoidance and conservatism were of the same or different characteristics. It also suggests that, in terms of the motive of tax hedge, tax avoidance and conservatism are highly relevant because conservatism is actively used for tax avoidance, whereas tax risks for uncertainty in future cash flows are not related to conservatism and management does not recognise tax risks as a negative factor.

▶ Key Words： tax avoidance, tax risk, conservatism, tax uncertainty, information characteristics

** Published on November 2020
** Full article available in Korean only
** Download here → 23-11_A Study on the Information Characteristics of Tax Evasion and Tax Risk - Focused on Conservati