Nguyen Vinh Khuong,

University of Economics and Law, VNU-HCM, 

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam,

E-mail: khuongnv@uel.edu.vn

Does corporate tax avoidance explain cash holdings? The case of Vietnam

Nguyen Tran Thai Ha,

Saigon University,

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam,

E-mail: nguyen.tranthaiha@sgu.edu.vn

Mai Thi Hoang Minh,

University of Economics Ho Chi Minh City, 

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam,

E-mail: hminh@ueh.edu.vn

Phung Anh Thu,

Nguyen Tat Thanh University, 

Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam 

E-mail: pathu@ntt.edu.vn

Abstract. Recent tax evasion research has considered tax avoidance as an act of minimizing the amount of taxes to be paid through appropriate methods. This research aims to investigate the impact of corporate tax avoidance on the corporate cash holdings of the firms listed at Vietnam’s stock market. The sample consists of 125 non-financial firms’ data as of 2010-2016, with the total of 875 observations. The investigation utilizes three different tax avoidance measures to examine the robustness of the research results. We used GMM estimator to test our hypotheses. This research ascertains empirical evidence that tax avoidance has a significant positive relationship with cash holdings of listed firms in Vietnam. Three measurements of tax avoidance presented the same conclusions to the regression results.

Received: December, 2018

1st Revision: April, 2019

Accepted: May, 2019

DOI: 10.14254/2071-789X.2019/12-2/5

JEL Classification: G32, H35

Keywords: corporate tax avoidance, corporate cash holdings, corporate effective tax rates, book-tax difference, Vietnam