The IRS uses information contained in financial statements as well as tax returns to detect tax avoidance behavior. We examine the impact on corporate tax avoidance behavior of reductions in the IRS’s information processing costs resulting from the mandatory adoption of XBRL for financial reporting. Motivated by the recent debate in the U.S. Congress over the cost-benefit of mandatory XBRL reporting for small firms, we pay particular attention to small firms, which inherently have relatively high information frictions. We find that the adoption of XBRL for financial reporting results in a significant decrease in tax avoidance. We further find that the negative relation between XBRL reporting and tax avoidance is less prominent for firms subject to more intense IRS monitoring in the pre-XBRL-reporting period. Overall, our results suggest that XBRL reporting reduces the cost of IRS monitoring in terms of information processing, which dampens managerial incentives to engage in tax avoidance behavior.

国税局使用财务报表和纳税申报单中包含的信息来检测避税行为。我们研究了由于强制采用XBRL进行财务报告而导致的IRS信息处理成本减少对公司避税行为的影响。受美国国会最近关于强制性XBRL报告为小型企业的成本收益的辩论的推动，我们特别关注小型企业，这些企业固有地具有相对较高的信息摩擦。我们发现，在财务报告中采用XBRL会大大减少避税行为。我们进一步发现，对于在XBRL报告之前的时期受到IRS更加严格监控的公司，XBRL报告与避税之间的负面关系不太明显。全面的，