Executive Incentive and Corporate Tax Avoidance: Review and Prospects

Corporate tax avoidance has always been a hot issue studied by scholars. As a profit-making organization, the company regards the maximization of corporate value as its primary goal, and has been motivated to implement various measures to reduce the outflow of economic benefits since the emergence of taxation. The modern tax system is in the process of constantly updating and improving. In recent years, the "tax reduction and fee reduction" and the preferential income tax policies have undoubtedly brought "benefits" to enterprises, but at the same time, they have also brought some potential threats to the national tax revenue. Tax avoidance decision as a strategic decision of a company is a direct manifestation of the motivation and behavior of corporate executives. The evaluation of tax avoidance benefits and risks by executives directly affects the degree of corporate tax avoidance. Therefore, from the perspective of executive incentives, this paper first elaborates the existing research on executive incentives and corporate tax avoidance, then reviews the literature on the two and their interaction, and finally makes comments on them, in order to provide some ideas for future research on executive incentives and corporate tax avoidance.