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Small- and medium-sized enterprises are essential to the economies of nearly all countries, as they directly influence the GDP and tax revenue. In 2019, the European Federation of Accountants and Auditors for SMEs surveyed SME account users, revealing that tax authorities were the most common recipients of the company's accounts, accounting for 61.40% of cases. This study, from a macroeconomic perspective, aims to uncover evidence of the impact of mandatory audits of Egyptian SMEs on their income tax compliance. It also seeks to explore the Egyptian SME tax environment to fill the knowledge gap by exploring perceptions of SMEs' tax performances and their levels of tax. This study provides evidence that the taxpayers' tax compliance behavior is an essential and decisive factor in the compliance of Egyptian SMEs with income tax. The results show that SME management is less persuaded by the potential benefits of mandatory audits on tax compliance than auditors and academics. Also, the study found experimental evidence confirming that the mandatory auditing of SMEs positively impacts their compliance with income tax. Additionally, this study developed a tax compliance scale (the RTRP scale) that effectively suits the nature and characteristics of SMEs, enabling the quantitative measurement of their compliance levels with income tax, as well as comparisons between SMEs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Because of the large scale of listed companies, they are often the main responsible parties for environmental problems. Therefore, from the perspective of compensation incentive, this study made an empirical test on how the pay dispersion within top managers affects corporate environmental responsibility information disclosure. By selecting A-share companies listed in Shanghai or Shenzhen Stock Exchange which published corporate social responsibility reports from 2008 to 2018 as research samples, a multivariate regression analysis model was established. The results showed that there is a significant inverted U-shaped relationship between executive compensation gap and corporate environmental responsibility information disclosure. Further research found that this relationship was only significant in state-owned enterprises.

Based on a sample from the Chinese corporate bond market, this paper investigates how bond investors respond to customers' geographic information, including customers' geographic dispersion and distance. Using the detailed locations of issuing firms and their five main customers, we find a significantly positive relationship between customers' geographic dispersion/distance and the costs of corporate bonds. This association is robust after both the endogeneity issues are controlled for and a series of robustness checks are conducted. The effects are less pronounced when issuers are audited by Big10 accounting firms and when issuers have high-quality customers. In sum, we apply cluster theory, transaction cost economics and information transfer in risk-asset pricing and find that bondholders demand different risk premiums after gaining access to customers' geographic information. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the global economic downturn, China's taxation continues to grow rapidly. Although many scholars attribute this phenomenon to macro factors, in this study, we investigate this issue from the perspective of combining enterprises and tax enforcement. Through a regression analysis of data from Chinese listed firms over the 2008–2018 period, we find that tax enforcement can lead to the stickiness of corporate tax expenses, that is, the percentage decrease in tax expenses for a decrease in sales revenue is less than the percentage increase in tax expenses for an equivalent increase in sales revenue. Further analysis shows that tax stickiness exists in multiple taxes, with business tax stickiness being the highest. Tax stickiness provides a new explanation for China's taxation to maintain rapid growth during economic downturns. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]