Tax management: analysis of the influence on the equity cost of Brazilian companies

Purpose: The present study sought to investigate whether tax management influences the equity cost of Brazilian companies listed in Brazil, Bolsa e Balcao (B3) from 2014 to 2018. Methodology: The study included the analysis of Proxie Book-Tax Differences (BTD) as a tool for identifying tax management, as suggested in the work of Moreira e Silva (2019), as well as the control variables, which are the return on equity (ROE), market value (QTOBIN), company size (LNAT) and company financial leverage (ALV). For data collection, the Bloomberg (R) database and the Reference Form available on the B3 website were used. For that, it was used the Multiple Linear Regression of the data type in balanced panel, resulting in a final sample formed by 630 observations. Results: Through BTD proxie, referring to the difference between accounting profit and tax profit, and used to capture tax management in this research, it was not possible to identify any relationship with the equity cost. Thus, for the purposes of this research, the theoretical adequacy and the statistical models used did not show that good tax management practices have a positive or negative effect on the equity cost. Contributions of the Study: It is observed that Brazilian studies did not analyze the effect of tax management on the equity cost in Brazilian companies using the Book-Tax Differences (BTD) indicator as a tool for identifying tax management and its influence on the cost of capital. So, this research followed the recommendation suggested by Moreira e Silva (2019), to analyze this cost with another indicator, in this case, Book-Tax Differences (BTD). According to the results, it was not possible to identify any relationship with the equity cost, thus contributing to the consolidation of the findings by Goh et al. (2016) and Moreira e Silva (2019) who present CashETR as the best metric for tax management, given that the results presented using the variables ETR and BTD, demonstrated that the cost of capital required by investors was unrelated to the fiscal aggressiveness of companies.