An application of machine learning on corporate tax avoidance detection model

Abstract

Corporate tax avoidance reduces government revenues which could limit country development plans. Thus, the main objectives of this study is to establish a rigorous and effective model to detect corporate tax avoidance to assist government to prevent such practice. This paper presents the fundamental knowledge on the design and implementation of machine learning model based on five selected algorithms tested on the real dataset of 3,365 Malaysian companies listed on bursa Malaysia from 2005 to 2015. The performance of each machine learning algorithms on the tested dataset has been observed based on two approaches of training. The accuracy score for each algorithm is better with the cross-validation training approach. Additionationally, with the cross-validation training approach, the performances of each machine learning algorithm were tested on different group of features selection namely industry, governance, year and firm characteristics. The findings indicated that the machine learning models present better reliability with industry, governance and firm characteristics features rather than single year determinant mainly with the Random Forest and Logistic Regression algorithms.