Use of Financial Ratios in selecting entities for Tax Audit purposes – empirical study in Albania

Abstract

Information from financial statements and reported financial ratios have long been used to detect common phenomenon such as fraudulent financial statements, earnings management, and the relation between financial ratios and the level of tax risk of an entity. The focus of this study is to research the use of financial ratios that entities declare, in the detection of the magnitude of tax avoidance. In this paper we apply a binary logistic regression to detect which financial statement ratios differentiate between tax evading and non-tax evading entities. We analyse data from 183 tax audited Albanian entities for 2015 and 2016 accounting years and calculate several financial ratios to determine the level of tax risk based on the tax evasion magnitude found by the tax audit of these entities. We apply univariate and multivariate analysis and find several important ratios that can indicate quite accurately the high risk of tax audit of an economic entity. We suggest including these ratios as risk indicators or “red flags” in the selection procedures employed by the tax auditors. As tax reporting and financial reporting have similarities across countries of the region, our findings may be useful for other Southern Eastern European Countries as well.