Name: ARQUIMEDES DE JESUS MORAES
Publication date: 20/03/2026
Examining board:
Name |
Role |
|---|---|
| ALFREDO SARLO NETO | Presidente |
| DONIZETE REINA | Examinador Interno |
| HENRIQUE FORMIGONI | Examinador Externo |
| JOSE ELIAS FERES DE ALMEIDA | Examinador Interno |
| SILVIO HIROSHI NAKAO | Examinador Externo |
Summary: The Brazilian tax system, known for its complexity and instability, has fueled a culture of
frequent disputes between companies and tax authorities. These disputes, often lengthy and
costly, not only affect firms’ cash flows but also reverberate in less visible areas, such as audit
fees, governance structures, and corporate risk management. The purpose of this dissertation is
to bring together three studies that interact with one another in examining these consequences,
which remain scarcely discussed in an integrated way in the national literature. The central
objective of the three articles is to analyze how tax litigation affects audit costs, corporate risks,
and governance practices, thereby offering an integrated perspective on its implications for the
Brazilian capital market. The analysis is grounded in the assumptions of agency theory and
information asymmetry, which help explain how conflicts of interest and informational frictions
influence tax behavior and governance mechanisms. To achieve this, quantitative
methodological procedures are adopted, based on panel data from companies listed on B3
between 2009 and 2024, employing econometric models such as OLS, Fixed Effects, GMM,
and quantile regressions, ensuring robustness and comparability across studies. The choice of
this topic is justified by the fact that tax litigation has direct implications for the functioning of
the capital market. It influences how investors perceive risk, challenges corporate governance
mechanisms, and directly affects the costs and demands imposed on external audits. Therefore,
it constitutes a problem that goes beyond the legal sphere and reaches relevant economic and
institutional dimensions. The central objective of this dissertation is to analyze the effects of
tax litigation on crucial dimensions of the Brazilian corporate environment, with emphasis on
audit fees, systematic and idiosyncratic risks, and corporate governance practices. To achieve
this goal, the dissertation is structured into three interdependent articles: the first investigates
the relationship between tax litigation and the pricing of audit fees; the second examines the
impacts of litigation on firms’ exposure to market and firm-specific risk; and the third evaluates
how corporate governance mechanisms influence the level of tax litigation. This integrated
approach enables a comprehensive understanding of how tax disputes are connected to auditing,
risk, and governance, thus expanding the Brazilian literature and contributing to the
international debate in emerging markets with a civil law tradition.
