This study examines the effects of family chairman on corporate tax avoidance in family-controlled firms. By employing the socioemotional wealth (SEW) theory, we find that family chairmen engage in less tax avoidance than non-family counterparts, because the decisions of family leaders are more affected by the incentive to preserve SEW, which is built on family members’ identification with the family business and their concerns about the family reputation. Such an effect is more pronounced in firms with higher reputational risks. Furthermore, we discover that the chairman plays a dominant role in explaining tax avoidance decisions compared to the CEO and CFO. Our findings are further supported by the change in tax avoidance associated with chairman turnover. We also exclude plausible alternative explanations based on the agency theory, and our results are robust to a battery of sensitivity tests.

中文翻译：

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你的心就是你的宝藏：家族董事长和家族控制企业的避税

本研究探讨了家族董事长对家族控制企业避税的影响。通过运用社会情感财富（SEW）理论，我们发现家族董事长比非家族成员避税较少，因为家族领导人的决策更多地受到保留SEW动机的影响，而SEW建立在家族成员的认同之上与家族企业以及他们对家族声誉的担忧。这种效应在声誉风险较高的公司中更为明显。此外，我们发现，与首席执行官和首席财务官相比，董事长在解释避税决策方面发挥着主导作用。与董事长更替相关的避税变化进一步支持了我们的发现。我们还排除了基于代理理论的合理替代解释，并且我们的结果对于一系列敏感性测试来说是稳健的。