planification Dictionary
In the following developments, we show that recourse to tax planning can be apprehended as a threat by shareholders insofar as it can conceal opportunistic behavior on the part of managers (1) and that taxable income that is not very high is likely to be perceived by investors as indicative of the firm's poor performance (2). Under these conditions, studies establish that tax planning is valued by shareholders only when certain conditions are met (3).planification fiscale The inclusion of the analysis of corporate tax choices within the framework of agency theory constituted a break in the understanding of tax planning by the literature, paving the way for the development of works which have shown that the tax planning could mask opportunistic behavior on the part of managers and even, in some cases, dominant shareholders. Slemrod (2004) was among the first to highlight the need to understand the tax choices of companies in the light of agency theory. Indeed, unlike the decisions taken by individuals, those of companies are part of a context of complex interactions between the management the agent and the shareholders – the principal – whose interests may diverge; such divergences can, moreover, appear within the shareholder base itself between the shareholders who take part in the management of the firm – generally the majority – and those who have only a limited influence and who, above all, have only fragmentary information on the ways and means adopted in order to reduce the tax burden. 6The first works carried out in this context linked the principal-agent problem and tax evasion (eg Chen and Chu, 2005; Crocker and Slemrod, 2004). Although tax evasion and tax planning – which is, in principle, legal – do not, by definition, respond to the same logic, this work is nonetheless of great interest. Indeed, they have in common to start from the postulate according to which the shareholders necessarily wish to encourage the managers to reduce the level of taxation of the firm, considering that it is in their interest that the effective tax burden of the company is reduced. (Crocker and Slemrod, 2004). Thus they are part of the continuity of the classical literature relating to agency theory (eg Holmström,