Unmasking shelters: Measuring the tax shelter likelihood of publicly-listed companies in the Philippines

• Main Authors: Lindo, Mary Elyssa Jo L., Ng, Crystel Janinne C., Pacamalan, Setiel Joyce A., Saavedra, Alesandro Rey A.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2016
• Subjects: Business enterprises > Taxation > Philippines; Tax shelters > Philippines; Accounting
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/6466
• Institution: De La Salle University

We gathered financial statement information on 178 publicly-listed companies in the Philippines to determine their tax shelter likelihood. Furthermore, we investigated which specific types of tax shelter activities are presumably being utilized by which industries. This study was instigated to bring the issue of tax shelters to the surface. Tax shelters post a detrimental effect on government budget and should be given appropriate attention. If not remedied, corporations and enterprises would be enriched at the expense of the government and the country people. We patterned our thesis on Lisowsky study. We made use of his tax shelter likelihood model to compute for the tax shelter probability of each company. Afterwards, we grouped these companies into their respective industries and ranked them based on their average probability. Based on the results of our study, the mining and oil industry scored the highest tax shelter probability. In terms of the tax shelter activities, lease-in, lease out and transfer pricing proved to be the most popular and utilized activities by most industries. Since our study has identified the industry that has the highest probability of tax shelter utilization and the tax shelter activities that are being used, the government could give priority in investigating tax shelters in that industry and its activities. This should entail a higher government collection compared to targeting every industry blindly.