The aim of this paper is to look at the inspections, bribery, and tax nexus by first looking at the bidirectional causality between bribes and inspections, and then examining the implications of this broader definition of corruption for firms’ tax payments. In asking whether inspections are anticorruption instruments, where higher incidence of bribes attract greater inspections, or if inspections are another manifestation of corruption that can be tamped down with the payment of bribes, we find evidence for the latter. The empirical investigation is implemented using a firm-level panel dataset from Vietnam, a country that suffered from high levels of corruption and tax-complexity, and also one that made significant strides in reducing these issues. The contribution of this paper is threefold: to identify the direction of the relationship between bribes and inspections, to assess the firm level tax implication of this broader definition of corruption, and to do so using the application of simultaneous equations model estimation to uncover the direction of causality. The results indicate that while bribes directly lower tax and fees obligations of firms, the overlooked indirect effect that plays out through the reduced inspections channel is another 6% of the direct effect.

本文的目的是通过首先查看贿赂和检查之间的双向因果关系，然后检查这种更广泛的腐败定义对公司纳税的影响，来研究检查、贿赂和税收关系。在询问检查是否是反腐败工具时，贿赂发生率较高的地方会吸引更多检查，或者检查是否是可以通过支付贿赂来遏制腐败的另一种表现形式，我们为后者找到了证据。实证调查是使用来自越南的公司级面板数据集实施的，越南是一个腐败和税收复杂程度高的国家，并且在减少这些问题方面取得了重大进展。本文的贡献有三方面：确定贿赂和检查之间关系的方向，评估这一更广泛的腐败定义对企业层面的税收影响，并使用联立方程模型估计的应用来揭示因果关系的方向。结果表明，虽然贿赂直接降低了公司的税费义务，但通过减少检查渠道产生的被忽视的间接影响是直接影响的另外 6%。