We explore whether corporate tax enforcement can affect bank lending. Specifically, we hypothesize that tax enforcement efforts aimed at small and midsized enterprises (SME) can improve their information environments, which in turn could lead to increased bank commercial lending. Exploiting the regional structure employed by the IRS until 1999, we find that the corporate tax return audit probability for SMEs is associated with greater commercial lending growth for regionally focused banks. We find similar evidence when exploiting the IRS reorganization from a regional to federal system in 2000. Further results show that tax enforcement's impact on SME informational environments is at least partially responsible for this association: The impact of tax auditing on bank lending is stronger for banks facing greater informational disadvantages and in areas where SMEs face greater hold‐up problems. Finally, we find that the tax audit rate is positively associated with loan portfolio quality, suggesting that tax enforcement can lead to better loan decisions. Our findings are consistent with the tax authority's mandate having important externalities on bank lending and SME access to capital, suggesting that the benefits to tax enforcement go beyond improving tax collection.

中文翻译：

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公司税务执行的外部性和银行业

我们探讨了公司税收执法是否会影响银行贷款。具体来说，我们假设针对中小企业的税收执法工作可以改善其信息环境，这反过来又可能导致银行商业贷款增加。利用国税局在1999年之前采用的区域结构，我们发现中小型企业的公司纳税申报审计的可能性与区域性银行的商业贷款增长更大有关。我们在2000年利用IRS从区域系统重组为联邦系统时发现了类似的证据。进一步的结果表明，税收执法对SME信息环境的影响至少部分归因于该协会：对于面临更大信息劣势的银行以及中小型企业面临更大控股问题的地区，税收审计对银行贷款的影响更大。最后，我们发现税收审计率与贷款组合质量呈正相关，这表明税收执法可以导致更好的贷款决策。我们的发现与税务机关的授权相一致，该授权授权在银行贷款和中小企业获得资本方面具有重要的外部性，这表明税务执法的好处不仅仅在于改善税收。