Does Ownership Affect Firm's Abnormal Audit Fees? The Role of Board and Audit Committe

This study aimed to examine the impact of family, institutional and government ownership on abnormal audit fees moderated by corporate governance. Abnormal audit fee is the difference between actual with normal audit fee. Auditors whose receive a positive abnormal audit fees (audit fee above normal) maybe will allow the client to perform opportunistic earnings management. This study used companies listed on Indonesia Stock Exchange (IDX) during 2012-2016. The results indicated that the higher the family ownership the lower the probability they will pay audit fee above normal since they feel that audit is not too important, they have been know about financial condition, they are looking for cheap auditors, because the audit is only to fulfill the obligations. The higher the institutional ownership the lower the probability they will pay audit fee above normal since they want transparancy, no need to perform opportunistic earnings management. Government ownership has no effect on the abnormal audit fees. In addition, corporate governance strengthen the relationship between institutional ownership and abnormal audit fees. This study has several implications specifically for the firms to improve their corporate governance practices and for the investors to be more active in monitoring activities especially when the ownership is highly concentrated.