Financial structure and current corporate income tax expense: Evidence from Indonesian oil, gas, and coal firms

Type of the article: Research ArticleAbstractThis study aims to examine the relationship between financial structure and current corporate income tax expense among publicly listed oil, gas, and coal companies in Indonesia. Using a quantitative panel-data approach, the study analyzes 28 companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange during 2021–2023, producing a balanced panel of 84 firm-year observations. The analysis focuses on liquidity, solvency, operating costs, and capital intensity, while controlling for firm size, revenue, and profitability. Current corporate income tax expense is measured from audited financial statements and distinguished from effective tax rates, cash tax paid, and government tax revenue. The results demonstrate that operating costs and capital intensity show negative associations in the random-effects model, but these relationships become statistically insignificant in fixed-effects and Mundlak correlated random-effects models. Liquidity and solvency are not statistically significant. The findings therefore indicate specification-sensitive firm-level accounting associations rather than robust within-firm relationships or causal effects. High correlation among monetary variables and the absence of a consistent production-scale measure further require cautious interpretation. The study contributes to understanding corporate tax-accounting outcomes in Indonesia’s extractive sector within a public-finance context.