Ownership structure, digital transformation, and corporate tax avoidance: Evidence from Indonesia

Type of the article: Research ArticleAbstractCorporate tax avoidance remains a central governance concern in emerging markets characterized by concentrated ownership and uneven monitoring effectiveness. This study examines whether multiple large shareholders and family ownership constrain corporate tax avoidance and whether digital transformation moderates these relationships in Indonesian listed firms. The sample consists of 369 firms (3,670 firm-year observations) during 2013–2022, representing major industry groups on the Indonesia Stock Exchange, including basic materials, energy, consumer cyclical, consumer non-cyclical, industrials, infrastructure, and property and real estate. Panel regression models are estimated using effective tax rates (ETR) and book–tax differences (BTD) as tax avoidance proxies. The results show that multiple large shareholders are negatively but not significantly associated with tax avoidance, indicating limited monitoring effectiveness in the full sample. Family ownership likewise exhibits no systematic relationship with tax avoidance. Furthermore, digital transformation does not significantly moderate the ownership–tax avoidance relationship at the aggregate level. However, industry-level analysis reveals that multiple large shareholders significantly reduce tax avoidance in the consumer cyclical sector, and this effect becomes stronger in firms with higher digital transformation intensity. Overall, the findings indicate that ownership-based governance and digital transformation do not uniformly constrain corporate tax avoidance in Indonesia, and their effectiveness is highly dependent on industry context.AcknowledgmentThis research was supported by the Ministry of Higher Education (MoHE) of Malaysia through the Fundamental Research Grant Scheme (FRGS/1/2022/SS01/UUM/02/10).