EMPIRICAL STUDY OF THE ROLE OF CREDIT INFORMATION, FINANCIAL SECTOR OUTREACH, AND DATA LOCALIZATION POLICY ON TAX EVASION.

Abstract

Tax evasion is a serious problem in both developed and developing countries. In our study, we want to show that banking outreach and the depth and quality of credit information systems play an important role in decreasing both tax evasion occurrence and tax evasion degree. Based on the data and methodology used in the study conducted by Beck et al. (2014), in this thesis, we tried to replicate and extend the scope of the research. Given the global trend of data localization, we want to contribute to the scholarly literature by investigating the impact of localization reforms on both the degree and occurrence of tax evasion. The laws on data localization often require companies to store commercial data locally (Panday 2018). According to Bauer et al. (2016), an analysis of 21 EU member countries' laws on data localization shows that these restrictions apply to commercial data such as transaction records, accounting records, and tax documents. Our results show a significant effect of localization reforms on tax avoidance, decreasing both the tax evasion rate and its occurrence. Moreover, our study found that the participation of foreign investors in external auditing decreases tax evasion