Excesso de confiança na agressividade tributária em empresas brasileiras de capital aberto

Abstract

The tax aggressiveness results from specific characteristics of bofh the company and the managers who make business decisions. The payment of taxes, according to the Classical Theory, is a rational decision in which the taxpayer analyzes the probability of the Tax Authority identify a lower tax collection than the legislation requires, also considering the value of the possible fines to be paid as a result of this verification. However, recently the literature has indicated the existence of behavioral factors that influence tax decisions. The Agency Theory admits this influence, inasmuch as it foresees the need to formalize variable remunerations to the convergence of interests of both the shareholders and the managers, since the manager can take decisions according to his own interests, altough in detriment of interests of the shareholder. In the same line of thought, the Upper Echelons Theory predicts that the characteristics of the company's top executives influence the business decisions. Thus, the objective of this research is to investigate whether Chief Executive Officer (CEO) characteristics explain tax aggressiveness of Brazilian publicly traded companies. In order to investigate the relationship between tax aggressiveness and the CEO characteristics, applied, correlational, documental, and quantitative research was chosen, regarding respectively to the nature, objectives, procedures, and approaches. The sample consists of 277 companies analyzed during the period from 2010 to 2017. The treatment of the unbalanced data panel containing 2216 observations was performed by multiple linear regression. The hypothesis that the CEO's overconfidence would explain the tax aggressiveness was rejected. Other characteristics of the CEO such as gender, age, and tenure may explain tax aggressiveness.