Corporate Tax Aggressiveness and Corporate Investment Expenditure in Nigeria and Ghana

Abstract This paper analyzes the effect of cash flow from corporate tax aggressiveness on corporate investment expenditure in Nigeria and Ghana from 2010 to 2017. The sampled outcome is measured by estimating pooled ordinary least squares, as well as random and fixed effects models. The study uses dynamic models to draw significance because it corrects for endogeneity, cross-sectional dependence, serial correlation, and heteroscedasticity by including instruments that are uncorrelated with the regressors in the underlying routine during estimation. The corporate tax aggressiveness indicators are tax saving, effective tax rate, book-tax difference, and temporary tax difference - with firm size as the control variable. Findings, among others, reveal that tax aggressiveness has a statistically significant influence on corporate investment expenditure in both countries. This provides evidence that tax aggressiveness is positive and that its coefficients are statistically significant to the tax aggressiveness variables; in particular, tax saving and effective tax rate maintained consistent positive and statistically significant relationships to corporate investment expenditure across all model specifications. In other words, an increase in tax saving and effective tax rate boost the total and new investment expenditure in both countries. Other findings show that a large difference between income reported on financial statements and income reported on tax return reduces corporate total and new investment expenditure in both countries. Furthermore, a proportionate increase in investment maintenance expenditure occurs when a book-tax gap changes in Nigeria. This is because managers reduce taxable income in order to increase investment maintenance expenditure. For the control variables, firm size boosts corporate investment expenditure in both countries.