Tax authority governance and corporate internal control quality

Abstract Prior studies of tax enforcement neglect the effect of tax enforcement officers' discretion on corporate internal control quality. This study exploits a unique quasi‐natural experimental setting of the reform of Chinese province‐level tax administrative penalty discretion standards since 2016 to examine the effect of tax authority governance on corporate internal control quality. We show that tax authority governance can improve corporate internal control quality. And this positive effect is more pronounced in firms with more tax avoidance and more collusion with tax supervisors. Furthermore, further analysis shows that legal enforcement and financial reporting environment can strengthen the positive relationship between tax authority governance and corporate internal control quality. Therefore, the above results show that tax authority governance not only increases the predictability of tax violation and its consequential penalties, but also restricts tax enforcement personnel's discretionary power, thereby reducing opportunities for tax avoidance and rent‐seeking behaviour.